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BLINDLY, BUT UNDOUBTINGLY, ... THE PROUD ALICE 
APPROACHED HIM (page 246) 


Wy RIVERSIDE BOOKSHELF U ml 
Ze 


THE HOUSE OF THE 
SEVEN GABLES 


A Romance 


BY 


NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 
HELEN MASON GROSE 





BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
The Riversive Press Cambridge 


COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 


The Riverside Press 
CAMBRIDGE - MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. 


y 7 sf 
Ch, 4 Je te Le 
Ah tPA 


Se@ ’ 47 


PUBLISHERS’ NOTE 


“THE House of the Seven Gables” was published a 
year later than “ The Scarlet Letter,” and was praised 
as warmly as the earlier book. The “ North American 
Review” said of it, ‘¢ The successive scenes of this bold 
and startling fiction are portrayed with a vividness 
and power unsurpassed and rarely equalled’’; and the 
“International Magazine” called it “the purest piece 
of imagination in our prose literature.” 

For almost three quarters of a century it has held 
its place, and it is interesting to note that in recent 
years it has been included in some of the best lists of 
required or recommended reading for young people. 
Certainly the young reader who comes to it now for 
the first time will find in it many of the most enthrall- 
ing elements of romance, — family feud, mysterious 
death, false imprisonment, valuable documents hidden 
in a secret recess, and a charming heroine who removes 
the curse. Being wise in the popular knowledge of our 
present-day scientific wonders, he will perhaps smile 
at the part that mesmerism plays in the story, and at 
the uncertain feeling about the telegraph, — which was 
a recent marvel when “The House of the Seven 
Gables” was written. 

The distinctive feature of this new edition is the 
series of thirty-six full-page illustrations by Mrs. Grose. 
These have grown out of the artist’s admiration for the 
story and her perception of the many points in it which 


il PUBLISHERS’ NOTE 


lend themselves so well to effective illustration. Her 
work has been in the best sense a labor of love. 

The publishers, on their part, have endeavored to 
produce a volume which in format serves as an appro- 
priate setting. 


Boston, July, 1924 


CONTENTS. 


eee 


Intropuctory Nore ’ : ; , X 


PREFACE 


1. 

Il. 
II. 
LY. 
Y; 
Vit 
VII. 
VU 
IX. 


XI. 
XIl. 
XIII. 
XIV. 
XV. 
XVI. 


a dd 


XVIII. 
XIX. 


XXI. 


Tue Otp PyNCHEON FAMILY . ‘ 


Tue Littte SHoprp-WinDow . 4 
Tue First CustoMER : : 
A Day BEHIND THE COUNTER 

May anp NOVEMBER . 

Mavute’s WELL ; 

Tue GUEST . : ; ? 

THe PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY . 


CLIFFORD AND PH@BE 


. THe PyncHEON GARDEN 3 : 


THe ARCHED WINDOW J 4 
THE DAGUERREOTYPIST 
ALICE PYNCHEON ; “fy 


PH@BE’S GOOD-BY . “ x ; 


THE ScowL AND SMILE. i : 


CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER 
Tue Fuicut oF Two Ow.Ls 


GOVERNOR PYNCHEON . : . 


ALICE’s PosIEs . : ; ‘ 4 
. THe FLOWER oF EDEN . 3 : 


THE DEPARTURE : M : ; 


e 


PAGE 


13 

17 

46 

60 

76 

92 
110 
123 
142 
162 
176 
192 
208 
224 
252 
266 
285 
300 
317 
336 
355 
366 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Blindly, but. undoubtingly, ...the proud Alice ap- 
proached him Colored frontispiece 


Poring over the dingy pages of his day-book 44 


She stole on tiptoe to the window, as cautiously as if she 
conceived some bloody-minded villain to be watching 


behind the elm-tree, with intent to take her life 56 
“Heaven help me!” she groaned, mentally. “Now is 

my hour of need!” (zn color) 68 
“Where is the cent?” 712 


It was a face to which almost any door would have 
opened of its own accord 90 


As for the bargain, it was wrinkled slyness and craft 
pitted against native truth and sagacity 102 


“Yes, dear cousin,’ answered Phcebe; “but, in the 
mean time, I hear somebody ringing it!” 106 


The chicken... mustered vivacity enough to flutter 
upward and alight on Phcebe’s shoulder (zn color) 112 


“Be careful not to drink at Maule’s Well!” said he 116 


“In a moment, cousin!” answered the girl. “These 
matches just glimmer, and go out” 120 


Phoebe could see the quivering of her gaunt shadow, as 
thrown by the firelight on the kitchen wall 128 


**Ah! — let me see! — let me hold it!” cried the guest 136 


**Good Heavens, Hepzibah! what horrible disturbances 
have we now in the house?”’ 140 


ILLUSTRATIONS Vv 


**Her brother! And where can he have been?”’ 144 
Pheebe, just at the critical moment, drew back (in color) 148 


She unlocked a bookcase, and took down several books 
that had been excellent reading in their day 162 


It pleased him best, however, when she sat on a low 
footstool at his knee (in color) 168 


It was with indescribable interest, and even more than 
childish delight, that Clifford watched the humming- 
birds 180 


Chanticleer, the next day, accompanied by the be- 
reaved mother of the egg, took his post in front of 
Phoebe and Clifford, and delivered himself of a ha- 
rangue 186 


A china bowl of currants, freshly gathered from the 
bushes 190 


With his quick professional eye he took note of the two 
faces watching him from the arched window (in color) 196 


Fresh was Phcebe, moreover, and airy and sweet in her 
apparel 202 


“Yes, if it is not very long,” said Phoebe 229 


**My father, you sent for me,” said Alice, in her sweet 
and harp-like voice 240 


“Tt is unaccountable how little while it takes some folks 
to grow just as natural to a man as his own breath” 264 


“You cherish, at this moment, some black purpose 
against him in your heart” 272 


Instinctively she paused before the arched window 286 
**As for us, Hepzibah, we can dance now!” _— (zn color) 296 


**For Heaven’s sake, dear Clifford, be quiet!” whis- 
pered his sister. “They think you mad” $12 


vi ILLUSTRATIONS 


The Judge has not shifted his position for a long while 
now 318 


A straw bonnet, and then the pretty figure of a young 
girl 350 


“Tell me! — tell me!” said Phoebe, all in a tremble 356 


“You look into my heart,” said she, letting her eyes 
drop. “You know I love you!” 360 


“Hark!”? whispered Phoebe. ‘Somebody is at the 
street-door”’ . (an color) 364 


Holgrave opened it, and displayed an ancient deed 374 


INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 





THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


In September of the year during the February of 
which Hawthorne had completed “The Scarlet Leé- 
ter,” he began “The House of the Seven Gables.” 
Meanwhile, he had removed from Salem to Lenox, in 
Berkshire County, Massachusetts, where he occupied 
with his family a small red wooden house, still stand- 
ing at the date of this edition, near the Stockbridge 
Bowl. 

* J sha’n’t have the new story ready by November,” 
fie explained to his publisher, on the 1st of October, 
“for 1 am never good for anything in the literary 
way till after the first autumnal frost, which has 
somewhat such an effect on my imagination that it 
does on the foliage here about me — multiplying and 
brightening its hues.” But by vigorous application 
he was able to complete the new work about the mid- 
dle of the January following. 

Since research has disclosed the manner in which 
the romance is interwoven with incidents from the 
history of the Hawthorne family, “The House of the 
Seven Gables” has acquired an interest apart from 
that by which it first appealed to the public. John 
Hathorne (as the name was then spelled), the great- 
grandfather of Nathaniel Hawthorne, was a magis- 


8 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 


trate at Salem in the latter part of the seventeenth 
century, and officiated at the famous trials for witch- 
craft held there. It is of record that he used peculiar 
severity towards a certain woman who was among the 
accused ;. and the husband of this woman prophesied 
that God would take revenge upon his wife’s perse- 
eutors. This circumstance doubtless furnished a hint 
for that piece of tradition in the book which repre- 
sents a Pyncheon of a former generation as having 
persecuted one Maule, who declared’ that God would 
give his enemy “blood to drink.” It became a con- 
viction with the Hawthorne family that a curse had 
been pronounced upon its members, which continued 
in force in the time of the romancer; a conviction 
perhaps derived from the recorded prophecy of the in- 
jured woman’s husband, just mentioned; and, here 
again, we have a correspondence with Maule’s male- 
diction in the story. Furthermore, there occurs in the 
*¢ American Note-Books” (August 27, 1837), a remi- 
niscence of the author’s family, to the following effect. 
Philip English, a character well-known in early Salem 
annals, was among those who suffered from John 
Hathorne’s magisterial harshness, and he maintained 
in consequence a lasting feud with the old Puritan 
official. But at his death English left daughters, one 
of whom is said to have married the son of Justice 
John Hathorne, whom English had declared he would 
never forgive. It is scarcely necessary to point out 
how clearly this foreshadows the final union of those 
hereditary foes, the Pyncheons and Maules, through 
the marriage of Phebe and Holgrave. The romance, 
however, describes the Maules as possessing some of 
the traits known to have been characteristic of the 
Hawthornes: for example, “so long as any of the race 


INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 2 


were to be found, they had been marked out from 
other men —not strikingly, nor as with a sharp line, 
but with an effect that was felt rather than spoken of 
— by an hereditary characteristic of reserve.” Thus, 
while the general suggestion of the Hawthorne line 
and its fortunes was followed in the romance, the 
Pyncheons taking the place of the author’s family, 
certain distinguishing marks of the Hawthornes were 
assigned to the imaginary Maule posterity. 

There are one or two other points tvhich indicate 
Hawthorne’s method of basing his compositions, the 
result in the main of pure invention, on the solid 
ground of particular facts. Allusion is made, in the 
first chapter of the “Seven Gables,” to a grant of 
lands in Waldo County, Maine, owned by the Pyn- 
cheon family. In the “ American Note-Books ” there 
is an entry, dated August 12, 1837, which speaks of 
the Revolutionary general, Knox, and his land-grant 
in Waldo County, by virtue of which the owner had 
hoped to establish an estate on the English plan, with 
a tenantry to make it profitable for him. An incident 
of much greater importance in the story is the sup- 
posed murder of one of the Pyncheons by his nephew, 
to whom we are introduced as Clifford Pyncheon. In 
all probability Hawthorne connected with this, in his 
mind, the murder of Mr. White, a wealthy gentleman 
of Salem, killed by a man whom his nephew had hired. 
This took place a few years after Hawthorne’s grad- 
uation from college, and was one of the celebrated 
eases of the day, Daniel Webster taking part prom- 
inently in the trial. But it should be observed here 
that such resemblances as these between sundry ele- 
ments in the work of Hawthorne’s fancy and details 
of reality are only fragmentary, and are rearranged 
to suit the author’s purposes. 


10 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 


In the same way he has made his description of 
Hepzibah Pyncheon’s seven-gabled mansion conform 
so nearly to several old dwellings formerly or still ex- 
tant in Salem, that strenuous efforts have been made 
to fix upon some one of them as the veritable edifice 
of the romance. A paragraph in the opening chapter 
has perhaps assisted this delusion that there must 
have been a single original House of the Seven 
Gables, framed by flesh-and-blood carpenters; for it 
runs thus :— 

‘* Familiar as it stands in the writer’s recollection 
—for it has been an object of curiosity with him 
from boyhood, both as a specimen of the best and 
stateliest architecture of a long-past epoch, and as the 
scene of events more full of interest perhaps than 
those of a gray feudal castle — familiar as it stands, 
in its rusty old age, it is therefore only the more diffi- 
cult to imagine the bright novelty with which it first 
zaught the sunshine.” 

Hundreds of pilgrims annually visit a house in 
Salem, belonging to one branch of the Ingersoll 
family of that place, which is stoutly maintained to 
have been the model for Hawthorne’s visionary dwell- 
ing. Others have supposed that the now vanished 
house of the identical Philip English, whose blood, as 
we have already noticed, became mingled with that 
of the Hawthornes, supplied the pattern; and still 
a third building, known as the Curwen mansion, has 
been declared the only genuine establishment. Not- 
withstanding persistent popular belief, the authenticity 
of all these must positively be denied; although it is 
possible that isolated reminiscences of all three may 
have blended with the ideal image in the mind of 
Hawthorne. He, it will be seen, remarks in the Pref- 


INTRODUCTORY NOTE. ii 


ace, alluding to himself in the third person, that he 
trusts not to be condemned for “laying out a street 
that infringes upon nobody’s private rights . . . and 
building a house of materials long in use for con- 
structing castles in the air.” More than this, he 
stated to persons still living that the house of the ro- 
mance was not copied from any actual edifice, but 
was simply a general reproduction of a style of archi- 
tecture belonging to colonial days, examples of which 
survived into the period of his youth, but have since 
been radically modified or destroyed. Here, as else- 
where, he exercised the liberty of a creative mind to 
heighten the probability of his pictures without con- 
fining himself to a literal description of something 
he had seen. 

While Hawthorne remained at Lenox, and during 
the composition of this romance, various other literary 
personages settled or stayed for a time in the vicinity; 
among them, Herman Melville, whose intercourse 
Hawthorne greatly enjoyed, Henry James, Sr., Doctor 
Holmes, J.T. Headley, James Russell Lowell, Edwin 
P. Whipple, Frederika Bremer, and J. T. Fields; so 
that there was no lack of intellectual society in the 
midst of the beautiful and inspiring mountain scenery 
of the place. “In the afternoons, nowadays,” he re- 
cords, shortly before beginning the work, “this valley 
in which I dwell seems like a vast basin filled with 
golden sunshine as with wine;” and, happy in the 
companionship of his wife and their three children, 
he led a simple, refined, idyllic life, despite the restric- 
tions of a scanty and uncertain income. A letter writ. 
ten by Mrs. Hawthorne, at this time, to a member of 
ber famiiy, gives incidentally a glimpse of the scene, 
which may properly find a place here. She says: “3 


12 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 


delight to think that you also can look forth, as I do 
now, upon a broad valley and a fine amphitheatre of 
hills, and are about to watch the stately ceremony of 
the sunset from your piazza. But you have not this 
lovely lake, nor, I suppose, the delicate purple mist 
which folds these slumbering mountains in airy veils, 
Mr. Hawthorne has been lying down in the sunshine, 
slightly fleckered with the shadows of a tree, and Una 
and Julian have been making him look like the mighty 
Pan, by covering his chin and breast with long grass- 
blades, that looked like a verdant and venerable 
beard.” The pleasantness and peace of his surround- 
ings and of his modest home, in Lenox, may be taken 
into account as harmonizing with the mellow serenity 
of the romance then produced. Of the work, when it 
appeared in the early spring of 1851, he wrote to Ho- 
ratio Bridge these words, now published for the first 
time : — 

“*'The House of the Seven Gables,’ in my opinion, 
is better than ‘The Scarlet Letter;’ but I should not 
wonder if I had refined upon the principal character a 
little too much for popular appreciation, nor if the ro- 
mance of the book should be somewhat at odds with 
the humble and familiar scenery in which I invest it. 
But I feel that portions of it are as good as anything 
I can hope to write, and the publisher speaks encour- 
agingly of its success.” 

From England, especially, came many warm ex- 
pressions of praise, —a fact which Mrs. Hawthorne, 
in a private letter, commented on as the fulfilment of 
a possibility which Hawthorne, writing in boyhood to 
his mother, had looked forward to. He had asked 
her if she would not like him to become an author and 


have his books read in England. 
G. Rae 


PREFACE. 


—e—— 


WHEN a writer calls his work a Romance, it need 
kardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain 
latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which 
he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had 
he professed to be writing a Novel. The latter form 
of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute 
fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the prob- 
able and ordinary course of man’s experience. The 
former — while, as a work of art, it must rigidly sub- 
ject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so 
far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the hu- 
man heart —has fairly a right to present that truth 
under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer’s 
own choosing or creation. If he think fit, also, he 
may so manage his atmospherical medium as to bring 
out or mellow the lights and deepen and enrich the 
shadows of the picture. He will be wise, no doubt, to 
make a very moderate use of the privileges here stat- 
ed, and, especially, to mingle the Marvellous rather as a 
slight, delicate, and evanescent flavor, than as any por- 
tion of the actual substance of the dish offered to the 
public. He can hardly be said, however, to commit a 
literary crime even if he disregard this caution. 

In the present work, the author has proposed te 
himself — but with what success, fortunately, it is not 
for him to judge—to keep undeviatingly within his 


14 PREFACE. 


immunities. The point of view in which this tale 
comes under the Romantic definition lies in the at- 
tempt to connect a bygone time with the very present 
that is flitting away from us. It is a legend prolong- 
ing itself, from an epoch now gray in the distance, 
down into our own broad daylight, and bringing along 
with it some of its legendary mist, which the reader, ac- 
cording to his pleasure, may either disregard, or allow 
it to float almost imperceptibly about the characters 
and events for the sake of a picturesque effect. The 
narrative, it may be, is woven of so humble a texture 
as to require this advantage, and, at the same time, to 
render it the more difficult of attainment. 

Many writers lay very great stress upon some defi- 
nite moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their 
works. Not to be deficient in this particular, the au- 
thor has provided himself with a moral, —the truth, 
namely, that the wrong-doing of one generation lives 
. into the successive ones, and, divesting itself of every 
temporary advantage, becomes a pure and uncontrol- 
lable mischief; and he would feel it a singular grat- 
ification if this romance might effectually convince 
mankind — or, indeed, any one man — of the folly of 
tumbling down an avalanche of ill-gotten gold, or real 
estate, on the heads of an unfortunate posterity, there- 
by to maim and crush them, until the accumulated 
mass shall be scattered abroad in its original atoms. 
In good faith, however, he is not sufficiently imagina- 
tive to flatter himself with the slightest hope of this 
kind. When romances do really teach anything, or 
produce any effective operation, it is usually through 
a far more subtile process than the ostensible one. 
The author has considered it hardly worth his while, 
therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its 


PREFACE. 15 


moral as with an iron rod,— or, rather, as by sticking 
a pin through a butterfly, — thus at once depriving it 
of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and un- 
aatural attitude. A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, 
and skilfully wrought out, brightening at every step, 
and crowning the final development of a work of fic- 
tion, may add an artistic glory, but is never any truer, 
and seldom any more evident, at the last page than at 
the first. 

The reader may perhaps choose to assign an actual 
locality to the imaginary events of this narrative. If 
permitted by the historical connection, — which, though 
slight, was essential to his plan, — the author would 
very willingly have avoided anything of this nature. 
Not to speak of other objections, it exposes the ro- 
mance to an inflexible and exceedingly dangerous spe- 
cies of criticism, by bringing his fancy-pictures almost 
into positive contact with the realities of the moment. 
It has been no part of his object, however, to describe 
local manners, nor in any way to meddle witb the 
characteristics of a community for whom he cherishes 
@ proper respect and a natural regard. He trusts not 
to be considered as unpardonably offending by laying 
out a street that infringes upon nobody’s private rights, 
and appropriating a lot of land which had no visible 
swner, and building a house of materials long in use 
for constructing castles in the air. The personages of 
the tale— though they give themselves out to be of 
ancient stability and considerable prominence — are 
really of the author’s own making, or, at all events, of 
his own mixing ; their virtues can shed no lustre, nor 
their defects redound, in the remotest degree, to the 
discredit of the venerable town of which they protess 
to be inhabitants. He would be glad, therefore, if 


16 PREFACE. 


especially in the quarter to which he alludes —ths 
book may be read strictly as a Romance, having a 
great deal more to do with she clouds overhead than 
with any portion of the actual soil ot the County of 


Essex. 


Lenox, January 27, 188i, 


THE 
HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


—_——~——— 


I. 
THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY. 


Hatr-way down a by-street of one of our New 
England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with 
seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various 
points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney 
in the midst. The street is Pyncheon Street; the 
house is the old Pyncheon House; and an elm-tree, 
of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is famil- 
iar to every town-born child by the title of the Pyn- 
cheon Elm. On my occasional visits to the town 
aforesaid, I seldom failed to turn down Pyncheon 
Street, for the sake of passing through the shadow 
of these two antiquities, — the great elm-tree and the 
weather-beaten edifice. 

The aspect of the venerable mansion has always 
affected me like a human countenance, bearing the 
traces not merely of outward storm and sunshine, but 
expressive, also, of the long lapse of mortal life, and 
accompanying vicissitudes that have passed within. 
- Were these to be worthily recounted, they would 
form a narrative of no small interest and instruction, 


and possessing, moreover, a certain remarkable unity, 
VOL. III. 2 


18 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


which might almost seem the result of artistic arrange 
ment. But the story would include a chain of events 
extending over the better part of two centuries, and, 
written out with reasonable amplitude, would fill a 
bigger folio volume, or a longer series of duodecimos, 
than could prudently be appropriated to the annals of 
all New England during a similar period. It conse. 
quently becomes imperative to make short work with 
most of the traditionary lore of which the old Pyn- 
cheon House, otherwise known as the House of the 
Seven Gables, has been the theme. With a brief 
sketch, therefore, of the circumstances amid which the 
foundation of the house was laid, and a rapid glimpse 
at its quaint exterior, as it grew black in the prevalent 
east wind, — pointing, too, here and there, at some 
spot of more verdant mossiness on its roof and walls, 
— we shall commence the real action of our tale at an 
epoch not very remote from the present day. Still, 
there will be a connection with the long past —a ref 
erence to forgotten events and personages, ard to 
manners, feelings, and opinions, almost_or wholly ob- 
solete — which, if adequately translated to the reader, 
would serve to illustrate how much of old material 
goes to make up the freshest novelty of human life. 
Hence, too, might be drawn a weighty lesson from the 
little-regarded truth, that the act of the passing gener- 
ation is the germ which may and must produce good. 
or evil fruit in a far-distant time; that, together with 
che seed of the merely temporary crop, which mortals 
serm expediency, they inevitably sow the acorns of a 
more enduring growth, which may darkly overshadow 
their posterity. 

The House of the Seven Gables, antique as it now 
iooks, was not the first habitation erected by civilized 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY. 19 


man on precisely the same spot of ground. Pyncheon 
Street formerly bore the humbler appellation of Maule’s 
Lane, from the name of the original occupant of the 
soil, before whose cottage-door it was a cow-path. A 
natural spring of soft and pleasant water —a rare 
treasure on the sea-girt peninsula, where the Puritan 
settlement was made —had early induced Matthew 
Maule to build a hut, shaggy with thatch, at this 
point, although somewhat too remote from what was 
then the centre of the village. In the growth of the 
town, however, after some thirty or forty years, the 
site covered by this rude hovel had become exceed- 
ingly desirable in the eyes of a prominent and power- 
ful personage, who asserted plausible claims to the 
proprietorship of this, and a large adjacent tract of 
land, on the strength of a grant from the legislature. 
Colonel Pyncheon, the claimant, as we gather from 
whatever traits of him are preserved, was character- 
ized by an iron energy of purpose. Matthew Maule, 
on the other hand, though an obscure man, was stub- 
born in the defence of what he considered his right ; 
and, for several years, he succeeded in protecting the 
acre or two of earth, which, with his own toil, he had 
hewn out of the primeval forest, to be his garden- 
ground and homestead. No written record of this 
dispute is known to be in existence. Our acquaint 
ance with the whole subject is derived chiefly from 
tradition. It would be bold, therefore, and possibly 
unjust, to venture a decisive opinion as to its merits; 
although it appears to have been at least a matter of 
doubt, whether Colonel Pyncheon’s claim were not 
unduly stretched, in order to make it cover the small 
metes and bounds of Matthew Maule. What greatly 
strengthens such a suspicion is the fact that this com 


20 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


troversy between two ill-matched antagonists—at a 
period, moreover, laud it as we may, when personal 
influence had far more weight than now — remained 
for years undecided, and came to a close only with the 
death of the party occupying the disputed soil. The 
mode of his death, too, affects the mind differently, 
in our day, from what it did a century and a half ago. 
It was a death that blasted with strange horror the 
humble name of the dweller in the cottage, and made 
*t seem almost a religious act to drive the plough over 
the little area of his habitation, and obliterate his place 
and memory from among men. 

Old Matthew Maule, in a word, was executed for 
the crime of witchcraft. He was one of the martyrs 
to that terrible delusion, which should teach us, among 
its other morals, that the influential classes, and_those 
who take upon themsétvesto be leaders of the people, 
are fully liable to all the passionate error that has 
ever characterized the maddest mob. lergymen, 
judges, statesmen, —the wisest, calmést, holiest per- 
sons of their day,— stood in the inner circle round 
about the gallows, loudest to applaud the work of 
blood, latest to confess themselves miserably deceived. 
If any one part of their proceedings can be said to de- 
serve less blame than another, it was the singular in- 
discrimination with which they persecuted, not merely 
the-poor and aged, as in former judicial massacres, but 
people of all ranks; their own equals, brethren, and 
wives. Amid the disorder of such various ruin, it is 
not strange that a man of inconsiderable note, like 
Maule, should have trodden the martyr’s path to the 
hill of execution almost unremarked in the throng of 
his fellow-sufferers. But, in after days, when the 
frenzy of that hideous epoch had subsided, it was re 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY. pA 


membered how loudly Colonel Pyncheon had joined 
in the general cry, to purge the land from witchcraft ; 
nor did it fail to be whispered, that there was an in- 
vidious acrimony in the zeal with which he had sought 
the condemnation of Matthew Maule. It was well 
known that the victim had recognized the bitterness 
of personal enmity in his persecutor’s conduct towards 
him, and that he declared himself hunted to death for 
his spoil. At the moment of execution —with the 
halter about his neck, and while Colonel Pyncheon 
sat on horseback, grimly gazing at the scene — Maule 
had addressed him from the scaffold, and uttered a 
prophecy, of which history, as well as fireside tradi- 
tion, has preserved the very words. “God,” said the 
dying man, pointing his finger, with a ghastly look, 
at the undismayed countenance of his enemy, — “ God 


will give him blood to drink!” 


\ After the reputed wizard’s death, his humble home- 
stead had fallen an easy spoil into Colonel Pyncheon’s 
grasp. When it was understood, however, that the 
Colonel intended to erect a family mansion — spacious, 
ponderously framed of oaken timber, and calculated to 
endure for many generations of his posterity — over 
the spot first covered by the log-built hut of Matthew 
Maule, there was much shaking of the head among 
the village gossips. Without absolutely expressing a 
doubt whether the stalwart Puritan had acted asa man 
of conscience and integrity throughout the proceedings 
which have been sketched, they, nevertheless, hinted’ 
that he was about to build his house over an unquiet 
grave. His home would include the home of the dead 
and buried wizard, and would thus afford the ghost of 
the latter a kind of privilege to haunt its new apart- 
ments, and the chambers into which future bridegrooms 


22 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


were to lead their brides, and where children of the 
Pyncheon blood were to be born. The terror and ugli- 
ness of Maule’s crime, and the wretchedness of his 
punishment, would darken the freshly plastered walls, 
and infect them early with the scent of an old and mel- 
ancholy house. Why, then, —while so much of the 
soil around him was bestrewn with the virgin forest- 
leaves, —why should Colonel Pyncheon prefer a site 
that had already been accurst? 

But the_Puritan_ soldier and magistrate was not a 
man to be turned aside from his well-considered 
scheme, either by dread of the wizard’s ghost, or by 
flimsy sentimentalities of any kind, however specious. 
Had he been told of a bad air, it might have moved 
him somewhat ; but he was ready to encounter an evil 
spirit on his own ground. Endowed with common- 
sense, as massive and hard as blocks of granite, fas- 
tened together by stern rigidity of purpose, as with 
iron clamps, he followed out his original design, prob- 
ably without so much as imagining an objection to it. 
On the score of delicacy, or any scrupulousness which 
a finer sensibility might have taught him, the Colonel, 
like most of his breed and generation, was impenetra- 
ble. He, therefore, dug his cellar, and laid the deep 
foundations of his mansion, on the square of earth 
whence Matthew Maule, forty years before, had first 
swept away the fallen leaves. It was acurious, and, as 
some people thought, an ominous fact, that, very soon 
after the workmen began their operations, the spring 
of water, above mentioned, entirely lost the delicious- 
ness of its pristine quality. Whether its sources were 
disturbed by the depth of the new cellar, or whatever 
subtler cause might lurk at the bottom, it is certain 
that the water of Maule’s Well, as it continued to be 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY. 23 


ealled, grew hard and brackish. Even such we find it 
now ; and any old woman of the neighborhood will cer. 
afy that it is productive of intestinal mischief to those 
who quench their thirst there. 

The reader may deem it singular that the head car. 
penter of the new edifice was no other than the son of 
the very man from whose dead gripe the property of 
the soil had been wrested. Not improbably he was the 
best workman of his time; or, perhaps, the Colonel 
thought it expedient, or was impelled by some better 
feeling, thus openly to cast aside all animosity against 
the race of his fallen antagonist. Nor was it out of 
keeping with the general coarseness and matter-of-fact 
character of the age, that the son should be willing to 
earn an honest penny, or, rather, a weighty amount of 
sterling pounds, from the purse of his father’s deadly 
enemy. At all events, Thomas Maule became the ar. 
chitect of the House of the Seven Gables, and per- 
formed his duty so faithfully that the timber frame- 
work fastened by his hands still holds together. 

Thus the great house was built. Familiar as it 
stands in the writer’s recollection, — for it has been an 
object of curiosity with him from boyhood, both as a 
specimen of the best and stateliest architecture of a 
long-past epoch, and as the scene of events more full 
of human interest, perhaps, than those of a gray feu- 
dal castle, — familiar as it stands, in its rusty old age, 
it is therefore only the more difficult to imagine the 
bright novelty with which it first caught the sunshine. 
The impression of its actual state, at this distance of 
a hundred and sixty years, darkens inevitably through 
the picture which we would fain give of its appearance 
on the morning when the Puritan magnate bade all the 
town to be his guests. A ceremony of consecration, 


94 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


festive as well as religious, was now to be performed. 
A prayer and discourse from the Rev. Mr. Higginson, 
and the outpouring of a psalm from the general throat 
of the community, was to be made acceptable to the 
erosser sense by ale, cider, wine, and brandy, in copi- 
ous effusion, and, as some authorities aver, by an ox, 
roasted whole, or at least, by the weight and substance 
of an ox, in more manageable joints and sirloins. The 
carcass of a deer, shot within twenty miles, had sup- 
plied material for the vast circumference of a pasty. 
A codfish of sixty pounds, caught in the bay, had 
been dissolved into the rich liquid of a chowder. The 
chimney of the new house, in short, belching forth 
its kitchen-smoke, impregnated the whole air with the 
scent of meats, fowls, and fishes, spicily concocted with 
odoriferous herbs, and onions in abundance. The 
mere smell of such festivity, making its way to every- 
body’s nostrils, was at once an invitation and an appe- 
tite. 

Maule’s Lane, or Pyncheon Street, as it were now 
more decorous to call it, was thronged, at the appointed 
hour, as with a congregation on its way to church. 
All, as they approached, looked upward at the impos- 
ing edifice, which was henceforth to assume its rank 
among the habitations of mankind. There it rose, a 
little withdrawn from the line of the street, but ir 
pride, not modesty. Its whole visible exterior was or- 
namented with quaint figures, conceived in the gro- 
tesqueness of a Gothic fancy, and drawn or stamped 
in the glittering plaster, composed of lime, pebbles, 
and bits of glass, with which the woodwork of the 
walls was overspread. On every side the seven gables 
pointed sharply towards the sky, and presented the 
aspect of a whole sisterhood of edifices, breathing 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY. 25 


through the spiracles of one great chimney. The 
many lattices, with their small, diamond-shaped panes, 
admitted the sunlight into hall and chamber, while, — 
nevertheless, the second story, projecting far over the 
ase, and itself retiring beneath the third, threw a 
shadowy and thoughtful gloom into the lower rooms, 
Carved globes of wood were affixed under the jutting 
stories. Little spiral rods of iron beautified each of 
the seven peaks. On the triangular pcrtion of the 
gable, that fronted next the street, was a dial, put up 
that very morning, and on which the sun was still 
marking the passage of the first bright hour in a his- 
tory that was not destined to be all so bright. All 
around were scattered shavings, chips, shingles, and 
broken halves of bricks; these, together with the 
lately turned earth, on which the grass had not begun 
to grow, contributed to the impression of strangeness 
and novelty proper to a house that had yet its place 
to make among men’s daily interests. 

The principal entrance, which had almost the breadth 
of a church-door, was in the angle between the two 
front gables, and was covered by an open porch, with 
benches beneath its shelter. Under this arched door- 
way, scraping their feet on the unworn threshold, now 
trod the clergymen, the elders, the magistrates, the 
deacons, and whatever of aristocracy there was in 
town or county. Thither, too, thronged the plebeian 
elasses as freely as their betters, and in larger num- 
ber. Just within the entrance, however, stood two 
serving-men, pointing some of the guests to the neigh 
borhood of the kitchen, and ushering others into the 
statelier rooms, — hospitable alike to all, but still with 
® scrutinizing regard to the high or low degree of 
gach. Velvet garments, sombre but rich, stiffly plaitea 


26 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


ruffs and bands, embroidered gloves, venerable beards, 
the mien and countenance of authority, made it easy 
to distinguish the gentleman of worship, at that period, 
from the tradesman, with his plodding air, or the 
laborer, in his leathern jerkin, stealing awe-stricken 
into the house which he had perhaps helped to build. 

One inauspicious circumstance there was, which 
awakened a hardly concealed displeasure in the breasts 
xf a few of the more punctilious visitors. The founder 
of this stately mansion—a gentleman noted for the 
square and ponderous courtesy of his demeanor — 
ought surely to have stood in his own hall, and te 
have offered the first welcome to so many eminent 
personages as here presented themselves in honor of 
his solemn festival. He was as yet invisible; the 
most favored of the guests had not beheld him. This 
sluggishness on Colonel Pyncheon’s part became still 
more unaccountable, when the second dignitary of the 
yrovince made his appearance, and found no more 
- ceremonious a reception. The leutenant- governor, 
although his visit was one of the anticipated glories 
of the day, had alighted from his horse, and assisted 
his lady from her side-saddle, and crossed the Colonel’s 
threshold, without other greeting than that of the prin- 
cipal domestic. 

This person —a gray-headed man, of quiet and 
most respectful deportment— found it necessary to 
explain that his master still remained in his study, 
or private apartment; on entering which, an hour be- 
fore, he had expressed a wish on no account to be dis- 
turbed. } 

“Do not you see, fellow,” said the high-sheriff of 
the county, taking the servant aside, “that this is no 
less a man than the lieutenant-governor? Summoy 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY. 97 


Colonel Pyncheon at once! I know that he received 
letters from England this morning; and, in the pe 
rusal and consideration of them, an hour may have 
passed away without his noticing it. But he will be 
ill-pleased, I judge, if you suffer him to neglect the 
courtesy due to one of our chief rulers, and who may 
be said to represent King William, in the absence of 
the governor himself. Call your master instantly!” 

*“‘ Nay, please your worship,” answered the man, in 
much perplexity, but with a backwardness that strik- 
ingly indicated the hard and severe character of Col- 
onel Pyncheon’s domestic rule; ‘my master’s orders 
were exceeding strict; and, as your worship knows, 
he permits of no discretion in the obedience of those 
who owe him service. Let who list open yonder door ; 
I dare not, though the governor’s own voice should 
bid me do it!” 

*¢ Pooh, pooh, master high-sheriff!”’ cried the lieu- 
tenant-governor, who had overheard the foregoing dis- 
cussion, and felt himself high enough in station to 
play a little with his dignity. “I will take the matter 
into my own hands. It is time that the good Colonel 
came forth to greet his friends; else we shall be apt 
to suspect that he has taken a sip too much of his 
Canary wine, in his extreme deliberation which cask 
it were best to broach in honor of the day! But since 
he is so much behindhand, I will give him a remem- 
brancer myself!” 

Accordingly, with such a tramp of his ponderous 
riding-boots as might of itself have been audible in 
the remotest of the seven gables, he advanced to the 
door, which the servant pointed out, and made its new 
panels reécho with a loud, free knock. Then, looking 
round, with a smile, to the spectators, he awaited a 


28 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


response. As none came, however, he knocked again 
but with the same unsatisfactory result as at first. 
And now, being a trifle choleric in his temperament, 
the lieutenant-governor uplifted the heavy hilt of his 
sword, wherewith he so beat and banged upon the 
door, that, as some of the by-standers whispered, the 
racket might have disturbed the dead. Be that as it 
might, it seemed to produce no awakening effect on 
Colonel Pyncheon. When the sound subsided, the 
silence through the house was deep, dreary, and op- 
pressive, notwithstanding that the tongues of many of 
the guests had already been loosened by a surrepti- 
tious cup or two of wine or spirits. 

“ Strange, forsooth ! — very strange!” cried the lieu- 
tenant-governor, whose smile was changed to a frown. 
“ But seeing that our host sets us the good example ot 
forgetting ceremony, I shall likewise throw it aside, 
and make free to intrude on his privacy ! ” 

He tried the door, which yielded to his hand, and 
~ was flung wide open by a sudden gust of wind that 
passed, as with a loud sigh, from the outermost portal 
through all the passages and apartments of the new 
house. I¢ rustled the silken garments of the ladies, 
and waved the long curls of the gentlemen’s wigs, 
and shook the window-hangings and the curtains of 
the bedchambers; causing everywhere a singular stir, 
which yet was more like ahush. A shadow of awe and 
half-fearful anticipation — nobody knew wherefore, 
nor of what— had all at once fallen over the company. 

They thronged, however, to the now open door, 
pressing the lieutenant-governor, in the eagerness of 
their curiosity, into the room in advance of them. At 
the first glimpse they beheld nothing extraordinary: 
a handsomely furnished room, of moderate size, some 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY. 29 


what darkened by curtains; books arranged on shelves ; 
a large map on the wall, and likewise a portrait of 
Colonel Pyncheon, beneath which sat the original Col- 
onel himself, in an oaken elbow-chair, with a pen in 
his hand. Letters, parchments, and blank sheets of 
paper were on the table before him. He appeared to 
gaze at the curious crowd, in front of which stood the 
lieutenant-governor; and there was a frown on his 
dark and massive countenance, as if sternly resentful 
of the boldness that had impelled them into his pri- 
vate retirement. 

A little boy — the Colonel’s grandchild, and the 
only human being that ever dared to be familiar with 
him — now made his way among the guests, and ran 
towards the seated figure; then pausing half-way, he 
began to shriek with terror. The company, tremulous 
as the leaves of a tree, when all are shaking together, 
drew nearer, and perceived that there was an unnat- 
ural distortion in the fixedness of Colonel Pyncheon’s 
stare; that there was blood on his ruff, and that his 
hoary beard was saturated with it. It was too late to 
give assistance. The iron-hearted Puritan, the relent- 
less persecutor, the grasping and strong-willed man, was 
dead! Dead, in his new house! There is a tradition, 
only worth alluding to as lending a tinge of supersti- 
tious awe to a scene perhaps gloomy enough without 
it, that a voice spoke loudly among the guests, the 
tones of which were like those of old Matthew Maule, 
the executed wizard, — “‘ God hath given him blood to 
drink!” 

Thus early had that one guest, —the only guest who 
is certain, at one time or another, 1 to find” his way | into 
_ every. human dwelling, —thus early had Death stepped 
across the threshold of the House of the Seven Ga 
bles! 


_ 30 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


Colonel Pyncheon’s sudden and mysterious end 
made a vast deal of noise in its day. There were 
many rumors, some of which have vaguely drifted 
down to the present time, how that appearances indi- 
cated violence ; that there were the marks of fingers 
on his throat, and the print of a bloody hand on his 
plaited ruff; and that his peaked beard was dishev- 
elled, as if it had been fiercely clutched and pulled. 
It was averred, likewise, that the lattice window, near 
the Colonel’s chair, was open; and that, only a few 
minutes before the fatal occurrence, the figure of a 
man had been seen clambering over the yarden-fence, 
in tiie rear of the house. But it were folly to lay any 
stress on stories of this kind, which are sure to spring 
up around such an event as that now related, and 
which, as in the present case, sometimes prolung them- 
selves for ages afterwards, like the toadstools that in- 
dicate where the fallen and buried trunk of a tree has 
long since mouldered into the earth. For our own 
part, we allow them just as little credence as to that 
other fable of the skeleton hand which the lieutenant- 
governor was said to have seen at the Colonel’s throat, 
but which vanished away, as he advanced farther into 
the room. Certain it is, however, that there was a 
great consultation and dispute of doctors over the dead 
body. One—John Swinnerton by name —who ap- 
pears to have been a man of eminence, upheld it, if we 
have rightly understood his terms of art, to be a case 
of apoplexy. His professional brethren, each for him. 
self, adopted various hypotheses, more or less plausible, 
but all dressed out in a perplexing mystery of phrase, 
which, if it do not show a bewilderment of mind ir 
these erudite physicians, certainly causes it in the un. 
learned peruser of their opinions. The coroner’s jury 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY. 31 


sat upon the corpse, and, like sensible men, returned 
an unassailable verdict of “ Sudden Death! ” 

It is indeed difficult to imagine that there could have 
been a serious suspicion of murder, or the slightest 
grounds for implicating any particular individual as 
the perpetrator. The rank, wealth, and eminent char- 
acter of the deceased must have insured the strictest 
scrutiny into every ambiguous circumstance. As none 
such is on record, it is safe to assume that none exe 
isted. Tradition, — which sometimes brings down 
truth that history has let slip, but is oftener the wild 
babble of the time, such as was formerly spoken at 
the fireside and now congeals in newspapers, — tradi- 
tion is responsible for all contrary averments. In 
Colonel Pyncheon’s funeral sermon, which was printed, 
and is still extant, the Rev. Mr. Higginson enumer- 
ates, among the many felicities of his distinguished 
parishioner’s earthly career, the happy seasonableness 
of his death. His duties all performed, — the highest 
prosperity attained, — his race and future generations 
fixed on a stable basis, and with a stately roof to 
shelter them, for centuries to come, — what other up- 
ward step remained for this good man to take, save the 
final step from earth to the golden gate of heaven! 
The pious clergyman surely would not have uttered 
words like these had he in the least suspected that 
the Colonel had been thrust into the other world with 
the clutch of violence upon his throat. 

The family of Colonel Pyncheon, at the epoch of hia 
death, seemed destined to as fortunate a permanence 
as can anywise consist with the inherent instability of 
human affairs. It might fairly be anticipated that the 
progress of time would rather increase and ripen their 
prosperity, than wear away and destroy it. For, not 


82 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


only had his son and heir come into immediate enjoy- 
ment of a rich estate, but there was a claim through 
an Indian deed, confirmed by a subsequent grant of 
the General Court, to a vast and as yet unexplored 
and unmeasured tract of Eastern lands. ‘These pos- 
sessions — for as such they might almost certainly be 
reckoned — comprised the greater part of what is now 
known as Waldo County, in the State of Maine, and 
were more extensive than many a dukedom, or even a 
reigning prince’s territory, on European soil. When 
the pathless forest that still covered this wild princi- 
pality should give place —as it inevitably must, though 
perhaps not till ages hence — to the golden fertility of 
human culture, it would be the source of incalculable 
wealth to the Pyncheon blood. Had the Colonel sur- 
vived only a few weeks longer, it is probable that his 
great political influence, and powerful connections at 
home and abroad, would have consummated all that 
was necessary to render the claim available. But, in 
spite of good Mr. Higginson’s congratulatory elo- 
quence, this appeared to be the one thing which Colo- 
nel Pyncheon, provident and sagacious as he was, had 
allowed to go at loose ends. So far as the prospective 
territory was concerned, he unquestionably died too 
soon. His son lacked not merely the father’s eminent 
position, but the talent and force of character to 
achieve it: he could, therefore, effect nothing by dint 
of political interest; and the bare justice or legality 
of the claim was not so apparent, after the Colonel’s 
decease, as it had been pronounced in his lifetime. 
Some connecting link had slipped out of the evidence, 
and could not anywhere be found. 

Efforts, it is true, were made by the Pyncheons, 
not only then, but at various periods for nearly a hun 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY. 33 


dred years afterwards, to obtain what they stubbornly 
persisted in deeming their right. But, in course of 
time, the territory was partly re-granted to more fa- 
vored individuals, and partly cleared and occupied by 
actual settlers. These last, if they ever heard of the 
Pyncheon title, would have laughed at the idea of any 
man’s asserting a right— on the strength of mouldy 
parchments, signed with the faded autographs of gov- 
ernors and legislators long dead and forgotten — to 
the lands which they or their fathers had wrested from 
the wild hand of nature by their own sturdy toil. 
This impalpable claim, therefore, resulted in nothing 
more solid than to cherish, from generation to genera- 
tion, an absurd delusion of family importance, which 
all along characterized the Pyncheons. It caused the 
poorest member of the race to feel as if he inherited a 
kind of nobility, and might yet come into the posses- 
sion of princely wealth to support it. In the better 
specimens of the breed, this peculiarity threw an ideal 
grace over the hard material of human life, without 
stealing away any truly valuable quality. In the 
baser sort, its effect was to increase the liability to 
sluggishness and dependence, and induce the victim of 
a shadowy hope to remit all self-effort, while await- 
ing the realization of his dreams. Years and years 
after their claim had passed out of the public memory, 
the Pyncheons were accustomed to consult the Colo- 
nel’s ancient map, which had been projected while 
Waldo County was still an unbroken wilderness. 
Where the old land-surveyor had put down woods, 
lakes, and rivers, they marked out the cleared spaces, 
and dotted the villages and towns, and calculated the 


progressively increasing value of the territory, as if 
VOL. II. 3 


84 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


there were yet.a prospect of its ultimately forming a 
princedom for themselves. 

In almost every generation, nevertheless, there hap- 
pened to be some one descendant of the family gifted 
with a portion of the hard, keen sense, and practica) 
energy, that had so remarkably distinguished the orig 
inal founder. His character, indeed, might be traced 
all the way down, as distinctly as if the Colonel him. 
self, a little diluted, had been gifted with a sort of 
intermittent immortality on earth. At two or three 
epochs, when the fortunes of the family were low, this 
representative of hereditary qualities had made his ap- 
pearance, and caused the traditionary gossips of the 
town to whisper among themselves, ‘“ Here is the old 
Pyncheon come again! Now the Seven Gables will 
be new-shingled!”’ From father to son, they clung to 
the ancestral house with singular tenacity of home at- 
tachment. For various reasons, however, and from 
impressions often too vaguely founded to be put on 
paper, the writer cherishes the belief that many, if not 
most, of the successive proprietors of this estate were 
sroubled with doubts as to their moral right to hold it. 
Of their legal tenure there could be no question ; but 
old Matthew Maule, it is to be feared, trode downward 
from his own age to a far later one, planting a heavy 
footstep, all the way, on the conscience of a Pyncheon. 
If so, we are left to dispose of the awful query, whether 
each inheritor of the property — conscious of wrong, 
and failing to rectify it—-did not commit anew the 
great guilt of his ancestor, and incur all its original 
responsibilities. And supposing such to be the ease, 
would it not be a far truer mode of expression to say 
of the Pyncheon family, that they inherited a great 
misfortune, than the reverse ? 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY. 73) 


We have already hinted that it is not our purpose 
to trace down the history of the Pyncheon family, in 
its unbroken connection with the House of the Seven 
Gables ; nor to show, as in a magic picture, how the 
rustiness and infirmity of age gathered over the vener- 
able house itself. As regards its interior life, a large, 
dim looking-glass used to hang in one of the rooms, 
and was fabled to contain within its depths all the 
shapes that had ever been reflected there, — the old 
Colonel himself, and his many descendants, some in 
the garb of antique babyhood, and others in the bloom 
of feminine beauty or manly prime, or saddened with 
the wrinkles of frosty age. Had we the secret of 
that mirror, we would gladly sit down before it, and 
transfer its revelations to our page. But there was a 
story, for which it is difficult to conceive any founda- 
tion, that the posterity of Matthew Maule had some 
connection with the mystery of the looking-glass, and 
that, by what appears to have been a sort of mesmeric 
process, they could make its inner region all alive with 
the departed Pyncheons ; not as they had shown them- 
selves to the world nor in their better and happier 
hours, but as doing over again some deed of sin, or in 
the crisis of life’s bitterest sorrow. The popular imagi- 
nation, indeed, long kept itself busy with the affair of 
the old Puritan Pyncheon and the wizard Maule; the 
curse, which the latter flung from his scaffold, was re- 
membered, with the very important addition, that it 
had become a part of the Pyncheon inheritance. If 
one of the family did but gurgle in his throat, a by- 
stander would be likely enough to whisper, between 
jest and earnest, ‘“‘ He has Maule’s blood to drink!” 
The sudden death of a Pyncheon, about a hundred 
years ago, with circumstances very similar to what 


86 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


have been related of the Colonel’s exit, was held as 
giving additional probability to the received opinion 
on this topic. It was considered, moreover, an ugly 
and ominous circumstance, that Colonel Pyncheon’s 
picture — in obedience, it was said, to a provision of 
his will — remained affixed to the wall of the room 
in which he died. Those stern, immitigable features 
seemed to symbolize an evil influence, and so darkly 
to mingle the shadow of their presence with the sun- 
shine of the passing hour, that no good thoughts or 
purposes could ever spring up and blossom there. To 
the thoughtful mind there will be no tinge of supersti- 
tion in what we figuratively express, by affirming that 
the ghost of a dead progenitor — perhaps as a portior 
of his own punishment — is often doomed to become 
the Evil Genius of his family. 

The Pyncheons, in brief, lived along, for the better 
part of two centuries, with perhaps less of outward 
vicissitude than has attended most other New England 
families during the same period of time. Possessing 
very distinctive traits of their own, they nevertheless 
took the general characteristics of the little community 
in which they dwelt ; a town noted for its frugal, dis- 
creet, well-ordered, and home-loving inhabitants, as 
well as for the somewhat confined scope of its sym- 
pathies; but in which, be it said, there are odder in- 
dividuals, and, now and then, stranger occurrences, 
than one meets with almost anywhere else. During 
the Revolution, the Pyncheon of that epoch, adopting 
the royal side, became a refugee; but repented, and 
made his reappearance, just at the point of time to 
preserve the House of the Seven Gables from confisca- 
tion. For the last seventy years the most noted event 
in the Pyncheon annals had been likewise the heaviest 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY. 83 


calamity that ever befell the race; no less than the 
violent death — for so it was adjudged — of one mem. 
ber of the family by the criminal act of another. Cer 
tain circumstances attending this fatal occurrence had 
brought the deed irresistibly home to a nephew of the 
leceased Pyncheon. The young man was tried and 
zonvicted of the crime; but either the circumstantial 
nature of the evidence, and possibly some lurking 
doubt in the breast of the executive, or, lastly, — an 
argument of greater weight in a republic than it could 
have been under a monarchy, — the high respectability 
and political influence of the criminal’s connections, 
had availed to mitigate his doom from death to per- 
petual imprisonment. This sad affair had chanced 
about thirty years before the action of our story com- 
mences. Latterly, there were rumors (which few be- 
lieved, and only one or two felt greatly interested in) 
that this long-buried man was likely, for some reason 
or other, to be summoned forth from his living tomb. 
It is essential to say a few words respecting the 
victim of this now almost forgotten murder. He was 
an old bachelor, and possessed of great wealth, in ad- 
dition to the house and real estate which constituted 
what remained of the ancient Pyncheon property. Be- 
ing of an eccentric and melancholy turn of mind, and 
greatly given to rummaging old records and hearken- 
ing to old traditions, he had brought himself, it is 
averred, to the conclusion that Matthew Maule, the 
wizard, had been foully wronged out of his home- 
stead, if not out of his life. Such being the case, and 
he, the old bachelor, in possession of the ill-gotten 
spoil,— with the black stain of blood sunken deep 
into it, and still to be scented by conscientious nos- 
trils,—the question oceurred, whether it were not ime 


388 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


perative upon him, even at this late nour, to make 
restitution to Maule’s posterity. Toa man living so 
much in the past, and so little in the present, as the 
secluded and antiquarian old bachelor, a century and 
a half seemed not so vast a period as to obviate the 
vropriety of substituting right for wrong. It was the 
belief of those who knew him best, that he would 
positively have taken the very singular step of giving 
up the House of the Seven Gables to the representa- 
tive of Matthew Maule, but for the unspeakable tu- 
mult which a suspicion of the old gentleman’s project 
awakened among his Pyncheon relatives. Their exer- 
tions had the effect of suspending his purpose ; but it 
was feared that he would perform, after death, by the 
operation of his last will, what he had so hardly been 
prevented from doing in his proper lifetime. But 
there is no one thing which men so rarely do, what- 
ever the provocation or inducement, as to bequeath 
patrimonial property away from their own blood. They 
may love other individuals far better than their rela- 
tives, — they may even cherish dislike, or positive 
hatred, to the latter; but yet, in view of death, the 
strong prejudice of propinquity revives, and impels the 
testator to send down his estate in the line marked 
out by custom so immemorial that it looks like nature. 
‘Tn all the Pyncheons, this feeling had-the energy of 
disease. It was too powerful for the conscientious 
scruples of the old bachelor; at whose death, accord- 
ingly, the mansion-house, together with most of his 
other riches, passed into the possession of his next 
legal representative. 

This was a nephew, the cousin of the miserable 
young man who had been convicted of the uncle’s 
murder. The new heir, up to the period of his acces- 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY. 89 


sion, was reckoned rather a dissipated youth, but had 
at once reformed, and made himself an exceedingly 
respectable member of society. In fact, he showed 
more of the Pyncheon quality, and had won higher 
eminence in the world than any of his race since the 
time of the original Puritan. Applying himself in 
earlier manhood to the study of the law, and having 
a natural tendency towards office, he had attained, 
many years ago, to a judicial situation in some inferior 
court, which gave him for life the very desirable and 
imposing title of judge. Later, he had engaged in 
politics, and served a part of two terms in Congress, 
besides making a considerable figure in both branches 
of the State legislature. Judge Pyncheon was un- 
questionably an honor to his race. He had built 
himself a country-seat within a few miles of his native 
town, and there spent such portions of his time as 
could be spared from public service in the display 
of every grace and virtue — as a newspaper phrased 
it, on the eve of an election — befitting the Christian, 
the good citizen, the horticulturist, and the gentleman. 

There were few of the Pyncheons left to sun them- 
selves in the glow of the Judge’s prosperity. In re- 
spect to natural increase, the breed had not thriven ; 
it appeared rather to be dying out. The only mem- 
bers of the family known to be extant were, first, the 
Judge himself, and a single surviving son, who was 
now travelling in Europe; next, the thirty years’ pris- 
oner, already alluded to, and a sister of the latter, 
who occupied, in an extremely retired manner, the 
House of the Seven Gables, in which she had a life- 
estate by the will of the old bachelor. She was un- 
derstood to be wretchedly poor, and seerned to make 
it her choice to remain so; inasmuch as her affluent 


40 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


cousin, the Judge, had repeatedly offered her all the 
comforts of life, either in the old mansion or his own 
modern residence. The last and youngest Pyncheon 
was a little country-girl of seventeen, the daughter of 
another of the Judge’s cousins, who had married a 
young woman of no family or property, and died early 
and in poor circumstances. His widow had recently 
taken another husband. 

As for Matthew Maule’s posterity, it was supposed 
now to be extinct. Fora very long period after the 
witchcraft delusion, however, the Maules had con- 
tinued to inhabit the town where their progenitor had 
suffered so unjust a death. To all appearance, they 
were a quiet, honest, well-meaning race of people, 
cherishing no malice against individuals or the public 
for the wrong which had been done them; or if, at 
their own fireside, they transmitted, from father to 
child, any hostile recollection of the wizard’s fate and 
their lost patrimony, it was never acted upon, nor 
openly expressed. Nor would it have been singular 
had they ceased to remember that the House of the 
Seven Gables was resting its heavy framework on a 
foundation that was rightfully their own. There is 
something so massive, stable, and almost irresistibly 
imposing in the exterior presentment of established 
rank and great possessions, that their very existence 
seems to give them a right to exist; at least, so excel- 
lent a counterfeit of right, that few poor and humble 
men have moral force enough to question it, even in 
their secret minds. Such is the case now, after so 
many ancient prejudices have been overthrown ; and 
it was far more so in ante-Revolutionary days, when 
the aristocracy could venture to be proud, and the low 
were content to be abased. Thus the Maules, at all 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY. A} 


events, kept their resentments within their own breasts. 
They were generally poverty-stricken ; always plebeian 
and obscure; working with unsuccessful diligence at 
handicrafts ; laboring on the wharves, or following the 
sea, as sailors before the mast; living here and there 
about the town, in hired tenements, and coming finally 
to the almshouse as the natural home of their old age. 
At last, after creeping as it were, for such a length of 
time, along the utmost verge of the opaque puddle 
of obscurity, they had taken that downright plunge, 
which, sooner or later, is the destiny of all families, 
whether princely or plebeian. or thirty years past, 
neither town-record, nor gravestone, nor the directory, 
nor the knowledge or memory of man, bore any trace 
of Matthew Maule’s descendants. His blood might 
possibly exist elsewhere ; here, where its lowly current 
could be traced so far back, it had ceased to keep an 
onward course. 

So long as any of the race were to be found, they 
had been marked out from other men — not strikingly, 
nor as with a sharp line, but with an effect that was 
felt rather than spoken of — by an hereditary charac- 
ter of reserve. Their companions, or those who en- 
deavored to become such, grew conscious of a circle 
round about the Maules, within the sanctity or the 
spell of which, in spite of an exterior of sufficient 
frankness and good-fellowship, it was impossible for 
any man to step. It was this indefinable peculiarity, 
perhaps, that, by insulating them from human aid, 
kept them always so unfortunate. in life. It certainly 
operated to prolong in their case, and to confirm to 
them as their only inheritance, those feelings of repug- 
nance and superstitious terror with which the people 
ot the town, even after awakening from their frenzy, 


42 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 


continued to regard the memory of the reputed witches 
The mantle, or rather the ragged cloak, of old Mat 
thew Maule, had fallen upon his children. They were 
half believed to inherit mysterious attributes ; the fam- 
ily eye was said to possess strange power. Among 
other good-for-nothing properties and privileges, one 
was especially assigned them, — that of exercising an 
influence over people’s dreams. The Pyncheons, if ali 
stories were true, haughtily as they bore themselves in 
the noonday streets of their native town, were no bet 
ter than bond-servants to these plebeian Maules, on 
entering the topsy-turvy commonwealth of sleep. Mod- 
ern psychology, it may be, will endeavor to reduce 
these alleged necromancies within a system, instead 
of rejecting them as altogether fabulous. 

A descriptive paragraph or two, treating of the 
seven-gabled mansion in its more recent aspect, will 
bring this preliminary chapter to a close. The street 
in which it upreared its venerable peaks has long 
ceased to be a fashionable quarter of the town; so 
that, though the old edifice was surrounded by habita- 
tions of modern date, they were mostly small, built 
entirely of wood, and typical of the most plodding 
uniformity of common life. Doubtless, however, the 
whole story of human existence may be latent in each 
of them, but with no picturesqueness, externally, that 
can attract the imagination or sympathy to seek it 
there. But as for the old structure of our story, its 
white-oak frame, and its boards, shingles, and crum- 
bling plaster, and even the huge, clustered chimney 
in the midst, seemed to constitute only the least and 
meanest part of its reality. Se much of mankind’ 
varied experience had passed there, —so much has: 
been suffered, and something, too, enjoyed, — tht. 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY. 43 


the very timbers were oozy, as with the moisture of 
u heart. It was itself like a great human heart, with 
a life of its own, and full of rich and sombre reminis- 
cences. 

The deep projection of the second story gave the 
house such a meditative look, that you could not pass 
it without the idea that it had secrets to keep, and an 
eventful history to moralize upon. In front, just on 
the edge of the unpaved sidewalk, grew the Pyncheon 
“lm, which, in reference to such trees as one usually 
meets with, might well be termed gigantic. It had 
been planted by a great-grandson of the first Pyn- 
cheon, and, though now fourscore years of age, or 
perhaps nearer a hundred, was still in its strong and 
broad maturity, throwing its shadow from side to side 
of the street, overtopping the seven gables, and sweep- 
ing the whole black roof with its pendent foliage. It 
grve beauty to the old edifice, and seemed to make 
it a part of nature. The street having been widened 
about forty years ago, the front gable was now pre 
cisely on a line with it. On either side extended a 
ruinous wooden fence of open lattice-work, through 
which could be seen a grassy yard, and, especially in 
the angles of the building, an enormous fertility of 
burdocks, with leaves, it is hardly an exaggeration to 
say, two or three feet long. Behind the house there 
appeared to be a garden, which undoubtedly had once 
been extensive, but was now infringed upon by other 
enclosures, or shut in by habitations and outbuildings 
that stood on another street. It would be an omission, 
trifling, indeed, but unpardonable, were we to forget 
the green moss that had long since gathered over the 
projections of the windows, and on the slopes of the 
roof; ner must we fail to direct the reader’s eye te 


£4 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES, 


a crop, not of weeds, but flower-shrubs, which were 
growing aloft in the air, not a great way from the 
chimney, in the nook between two of the gables. They 
were called Alice’s Posies. The tradition was, that 
a certain Alice Pyncheon had flung up the seeds, in 
sport, and that the dust of the street and the decay 
of the roof gradually formed a kind of soil for them- 
out of which they grew, when Alice had long been in 
her grave. However the flowers might have come 
there, it was both sad and sweet to observe how Na- 
ture adopted to herself this desolate, decaying, gusty, 
rusty old house of the Pyncheon family; and how the 
ever-returning summer did her best to gladden it with 
tender beauty, and grew melancholy in the effort. 
There is one other feature, very essential to be 
noticed, but which, we greatly fear, may damage any 
picturesque and romantic impression which we have 
been willing to throw over our sketch of this respect- 
able edifice. In the front gable, under the impending 
brow of the second story, and contiguous to the street, 
was a shop-door, divided horizontally in the midst, and 
with a window for its upper segment, such as is often 
seen in dwellings of a somewhat ancient date. This 
same shop-door had been a subject of no slight morti- 
fication to the present occupant of the august Pyn- 
cheon House, as well as to some of her predecessors. 
The matter is disagreeably delicate to handle; but, 
since the reader must needs be let into the secret, lie 
will please to understand, that, about a century ago, 
the head of the Pyncheons found himself involved in 
serious financial difficulties. The fellow (gentleman, 
as he styled himself) can hardly have been other than 
8 spurious interloper; for, instead of seeking office 
from the king or the royal governor, or urging hie 








PORING OVER THE DINGY PAGES OF HIS DAY-BOOK 


THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY. 45 


hereditary claim to Eastern lands, he bethought him. 
self of no better avenue to wealth than by cutting a 
shop-door through the side of his ancestral residence, 
It was the custom of the time, indeed, for merchants 
to store their goods and transact business in their own 
dwellings. But there was something pitifully smal 
in this old Pyncheon’s mode of setting about his com. 
mercial operations ; it was whispered, that, with his 
own hands, all beruffled as they were, he used to give 
change for a shilling, and would turn a half-penny 
twice over, to make sure that it was a good one. Be- 
yond all question, he had the blood of a petty huckster 
in his veins, through whatever channel it may have 
found its way there. 

Immediately on his death, the shop-door had been 
locked, bolted, and barred, and, down to the period of 
our story, had probably never once been opened. The 
old counter, shelves, and other ‘fixtures of the little 
shop remained just as he had left them. It used to 
be affirmed, that the dead shop-keeper, in a white wig, 
a faded velvet coat, an apron at his waist, and his 
ruffles carefully turned back from his wrists, might 
be seen through the chinks of the shutters, any night 
of the year, ransacking his till, or poring over the 
dingy pages of his day-book. From the look of un- 
utterable woe upon his face, it appeared to be his 
doom to spend eternity in a vain effort to make hi 
accounts balance. 

And now— in avery humble way, as will be seen— 
we proceed to open our narrative. 


id. 
{THE LITTLE SHOP—WINDOW. 


{7 still lacked half an hour of sunrise, when Misa 
Hepzibah Pyncheon — we will not say awoke, it be- 
ing doubtful whether the poor lady had so much as 
closed her eyes during the brief night of midsummer 
— but, at all events, arose from her solitary pillow, 
and began what it would be mockery to term the 
adornment of her person. Far from us be the in- 
decorum of assisting, even in imagination, at a maiden 
lady’s toilet! Our story must therefore await Miss 
Hepzibah at the threshold of her chamber; only pre- 
suming, meanwhile, to note some of the heavy sighs 
that labored from her bosom, with little restraint as 
to their lugubrious depth and volume of sound, inas- 
much as they could be audible to nobody save a dis- 
embodied listener like ourself. The Old Maid was 
alone in the old house. Alone, except for a certain 
respectable and orderly young man, an artist in the 
_daguerreotype line, who, for about three months back, 
had been a lodger in a remote gable, — quite a house 
by itself, indeed, — with locks, bolts, and oaken bars 
on all the intervening doors. Inaudible, consequently, 
were poor Miss Hepzibah’s gusty sighs. Inaudible 
the creaking joints of her stiffened knees, as she knelt 
down by the bedside. And inaudible, too, by mortal 
ear, but heard with all-comprehending love and pity in 
the farthest heaven, that almost agony of prayer—- now 


THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW. 47 


whispered, now a groan, now a struggling silence — 
wherewith she besought the Divine assistance through 
the day! Evidently, this is to be a day of more than 
ordinary trial to Miss Hepzibah, who, for above a 
quarter of a century gone by, has dwelt in strict seclu- 
sion, taking no part in the business of life, and just as 
little in its intercourse and pleasures. Not with such 
fervor prays the torpid recluse, looking forward to the 
eold, sunless, stagnant calm of a day that is to be like 
innumerable yesterdays ! 

The maiden lady’s devotions are concluded. Will 
she now issue forth over the threshold of our story ? 
Not yet, by many moments. First, every drawer in 
the tall, old-fashioned bureau is to be opened, with 
difficulty, and with a succession of spasmodic jerks ; 
then, all must close again, with the same fidgety re- 
luctance. There is a rustling of stiff silks; a tread of 
backward and forward footsteps to and fro across the 
chamber. We suspect Miss Hepzibah, moreover, of 
taking a step upward into a chair, in order to give 
heedful regard to her appearance on all sides, and at 
full length, in the oval, dingy-framed toilet-glass, that 
hangs above her table. Truly! well, indeed! who 
would have thought it! Is all this precious time to 
be lavished on the matutinal repair and beautifying of 
an elderly person, who never goes abroad, whom no. 
body ever visits, and from whom, when she shall have 
done her utmost, it were the best charity to turn one’s 
ayes another way ? 

Now she is almost ready. Let us pardon her one 
other pause; for it is given to the sole sentiment, or, 
we might better say, — heightened and rendered in- 
tense, as it has been, by sorrow and seclusion, — to the 
strong passion of her life. We heard the turning of 


48 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


a key in a small lock; she has opened a secret drawer 
of an escritoire, and is probably looking at a certain 
miniature, done in Malbone’s most perfect style, anc 
representing a face worthy of no less delicate a pencil. 
Jt was once our good fortune to see this picture. It is 
a likeness of a young man, in a silken dressing-gown 
of an old fashion, the soft richness of which is wel! 
adapted to the countenance of reverie, with its full, 
tender lips, and beautiful eyes, that seem to indicate 
not so much capacity of thought, as gentle and volupt- 
uous emotion. Of the possessor of such features we 
shall have a right to ask nothing, except that he would 
take the rude world easily, and make himself happy in 
it. Can it have been an early lover of Miss Hepzibah? 
No; she never had a lover — poor thing, how coula. 
she ?—nor ever knew, by her own experience, what 
love technically means. And yet, her undying faith 
and trust, her fresh remembrance, and continual de- 
votedness towards the original of that miniature, have 
been the only substance for her heart to feed upon. 

She seems to have put aside the miniature, and is 
standing again before the toilet-glass. There are tears 
to be wiped off. A few more footsteps to and fro; 
and here, at last, — with another pitiful sigh, like a 
gust of chill, damp wind out of a long-closed vault, the 
door of which has accidentally been set ajar, — here 
comes Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon! Forth she steps 
into the dusky, time-darkened passage; a tall figure, 
clad in black silk, with a long and shrunken waist, 
feeling her way towards the stairs like a near-sighted 
person, as in truth she is. 

The sun, meanwhile, if not already above the hort 
zon, was ascending nearer and nearer to its verge. A 
few clouds, floating high upward, caught some of the 


THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW. 49 


earliest light, and threw down its golden gleam on the 
windows of all the houses in the street, not forgetting 
the House of the Seven Gables, which — many such 
sunrises as it had witnessed — looked cheerfully at the 
present one. The reflected radiance served to show, 
pretty distinctly, the aspect and arrangement of the 
room which Hepzibah entered, after descending the 
stairs. It was a low-studded room, with a beam across 
the ceiling, panelled with dark wood, and having a 
large chimney-piece, set round with pictured tiles, but 
now closed by an iron fire-board, through which ran 
the funnel of a modern stove. There was a carpet on 
the floor, originally of rich texture, but so worn and 
faded in these latter years that its once brilliant figure 
had quite vanished into one indistinguishable hue. In 
the way of furniture, there were two tables: one, con- 
structed with perplexing intricacy and exhibiting ar 
many feet as a centipede ; the other, most delicately 
wrought, with four long and slender legs, so apparently 
frail that it was almost incredible what a length of 
time the ancient tea-table had stood upon them. Half 
a dozen chairs stood about the room, straight and stiff, 
and so ingeniously contrived for the discomfort of the 
human person that they were irksome even to sight, 
and conveyed the ugliest possible idea of the state of 
society to which they could have been adapted. One 
exception there was, however, in a very antique elbow: 
chair, with a high back, carved elaborately in oak, 
and a roomy depth within its arms, that made up, by 
its spacious comprehensiveness, for the lack of any of 
those artistic curves which abound in a modern chair. 
As for ornamental articles of furniture, we recollect 
but two, if such they may be called. One was a map 
of the Pyncheon territory at the eastward, not en 


50 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


graved, but the handiwork of some skilful old draughts. 
man, and grotesquely illuminated with pictures of In- 
dians and wild beasts, among which was seen a lion ; 
the natural history of the region being as little known 
as its geography, which was put down most fantastic- 
ally awry. The other adornment was the portrait of 
ald Colonel Pyncheon, at two thirds length, represent- 
ing the stern features of a Puritanic-looking personage, 
in a skull-cap, with a laced band and a grizzly beard ; 
holding a Bible with one hand, and in the other up- 
lifting an iron sword-hilt. The latter object, being 
more successfully depicted by the artist, stood out in 
far greater prominence than the sacred volume. Face 
to face with this picture, on entering the apartment, 
Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon came to a pause ; regarding 
it with a singular scowl, a strange contortion of the 
brow, which, by people who did not know her, would 
probably have been interpreted as an expression of 
bitter anger and ill-will. But it was no such thing. 
She, in fact, felt a reverence for the pictured visage, 
of which only a far-descended and time-stricken virgin 
could be susceptible ; and this forbidding scowl was 
the innocent result of her near-sightedness, and an 
effort so to concentrate her powers of vision as to sub- 
stitute a firm outline of the object instead of a vague 
one. | 
We must linger a moment on this unfortunate ex- 
pression of poor Hepzibah’s brow. Her scowl, —as 
the world, or such part of it as sometimes caught a 
transitory glimpse of her at the window, wickedly per- 
sisted in calling it, — her scowl had done Miss Hepzi- 
bah a very ill office, in establishing her character as 
an ill-tempered old maid; nor does it appear improba- 


ble that, by often gazing at herself in a dim looking- 


THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW. 51 


glass, and perpetually encountering her own frown 
within its ghostly sphere, she had been led to interpret 
the expression almost as unjustly as the world did 
“‘ How miserably cross I look!” she must often havi 
whispered to herself; and ultimately have fancied her- 
self so, by a sense of inevitable doom. But her hear 
mever frowned. It was naturally tender, sensitive. 
and full of little tremors and palpitations; all ot 
which weaknesses it retained, while her visage was 
growing so perversely stern, and even fierce. Nor 
had Hepzibah ever any hardihood, except what came 
from the very warmest nook in her affections. 

All this time, however, we are loitering faint-heart- 
edly on the threshold of our story. In very truth, we 
have an invincible reluctance to disclose what Miss 
Hepzibah Pyncheon was about to do. 

It has already been observed, that, in the basement 
story of the gable fronting on the street, an unworthy 
ancestor, nearly a century ago, had fitted up a shop. 
Ever since the old gentleman retired from trade, and 
fell asleep under his coffin-lid, not only the shop-door, 
but the inner arrangements, had been suffered to re- 
main unchanged; while the dust of ages gathered 
inch-deep over the shelves and counter, and partly 
filled an old pair of scales, as if it were of valuc 
enough to be weighed. It treasured itself up, too, in 
the half-open till, where there still lingered a base six- 
pence, worth neither more nor less than the hereditary 
pride which had here been put to shame. Such had 
been the state and condition of the little shop in old 
Hepzibah’s childhood, when she and her brother used 
to play at hide-and-seek in its forsaken precincts. Soe 
it had remained, until within a few days past. 

But now, though the shop-window was still closely 


62 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


curtained from the public gaze, a remarkable changes 
had taken place in its interior. The rich and heavy 
festoons of cobweb, which it had cost a long ancestral 
succession of spiders their life’s labor to spin and 
weave, had been carefully brushed away from the ceil- 
ing. The counter, shelves, and floor had all been 
scoured, and the latter was overstrewn with fresh blue 
sand. The brown scales, too, had evidently undergone 
rigid discipline, in an unavailing effort to rub off the 
rust, which, alas! had eaten through and through 
their substance. Neither was the little old shop any 
longer empty of merchantable goods. A curious eye, 
privileged to take an account of stock, and investi- 
gate behind the counter, would have discovered a bar- 
rel, — yea, two or three barrels and half ditto, — one 
containing flour, another apples, and a third, perhaps, 
Indian meal. There was likewise a square box of 
pine-wood, full of soap in bars; also, another of the 
same size, in which were tallow-candles, ten to the 
yvound. A small stock of brown sugar, some white 
beans and split peas, and a few other commodities of 
low price, and such as are constantly in demand, made 
up the bulkier portion of the merchandise. It might 
have been taken for a ghostly or phantasmagoric re- 
dection of the old shop-keeper Pyncheon’s shabbily 
provided shelves, save that some of the articles were 
of a description and outward form which could hardly 
have been known in his day. For instance, there was 
a glass pickle-jar, filled with fragments of Gibraltar 
rock; not, indeed, splinters of the veritable stone 
foundation of the famous fortress, but bits of delectable 
candy, neatly done up in white paper. Jim Crow, 
moreover, was seen executing his world-renowned 
dance, in gingerbread. A party of leaden dragoons 


THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW. 53 


were galloping along one of the shelves, in equip- 
ments and uniform of modern cut; and there were 
some sugar figures, with no strong resemblance to the 
humanity of any epoch, but less unsatisfactorily repre- 
senting our own fashions than those of a hundred 
years ago. Another phenomenon, still more strikingly 
modern, was a package of lucifer matches, which, in 
old times, would have been thought actually to borrow 
their instantaneous flame from the nether fires of 
Tophet. 

In short, to bring the matter at once to a point, it 
was incontrovertibly evident that somebody had taken 
the shop and fixtures of the long-retired and forgotten 
Mr. Pyncheon, and was about to renew the enterprise 
of that departed worthy, with a different set of cus- 
tomers. Who could this bold adventurer be? And, 
of all places in the world, why had he chosen the 
House of the Seven Gables as the scene of his com- 
mercial speculations ? 

We return to the elderly maiden. She at length 
withdrew her eyes from the dark countenance of the 
Colonel’s portrait, heaved a sigh, — indeed, her breast 
was a very cave of Alolus that morning, — and stept 
across the room on tiptoe, as is the customary gait of 
elderly women. Passing through an intervening pas- 
sage, she opened a door that communicated with the 
shop, just now so elaborately described. Owing to 
the projection of the upper story —and still more to 
the thick shadow of the Pyncheon Elm, which stood 
almost directly in front of the gable—the twilight, 
here, was still as much akin to night as morning. 
Another heavy sigh from Miss Hepzibah! After a 
moment’s pause on the threshold, peering towards the 
window with her near-sighted scowl, as if frowning 


54 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


down some bitter enemy, she suddenly projected her 
self into the shop. The haste, and, as it were, the 
galvanic impulse of the movement, were really quite 
startling. 

Nervously —in a sort of frenzy, we might almost 
say —she began to busy herself in arranging some 
children’s playthings, and other little wares, on the 
shelves and at the shop-window. In the aspect of this 
dark-arrayed, pale-faced, lady-like old figure there was 
a deeply tragic character that contrasted irreconcilably 
with the ludicrous pettiness of her employment. It 
seemed a queer anomaly, that so gaunt and dismal a 
personage should take a toy in hand; a miracle, that 
the toy did not vanish in her grasp; a miserably ab- 
surd idea, that she should go on perplexing her stiff 
and sombre intellect with the question how to tempt 
little boys into her premises! Yet such is undoubt- 
edly her object. Now she places a gingerbread ele- 
phant against the window, but with so tremulous a 
touch that it tumbles upon the floor, with the dismem- 
berment of three legs and its trunk; it has ceased to 
be an elephant, and has become a few bits of musty 
gingerbread. There, again, she has upset a tumbler 
of marbles, all of which roll different ways, and each 
individual marble, devil-directed, into the most diffis 
cult obscurity that it can find. Heaven help our poo 
old Hepzibah, and forgive us for taking a ludicrou 
view of her position! As her rigid and rusty fram.. 
goes down upon its hands and knees, in quest of the 
absconding marbles, we positively feel so much the 
more inclined to shed tears of sympathy, from the 
very fact that we must needs turn aside and laugh at 
her. For here, —and if we fail to impress it suitably 
upon the reader, it is our own fault, not that of the 


THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW. 55 


theme, — here is one of the truest points of melan: 
choly interest that occur in ordinary life. It was the 
final throe of what called itself old gentility. A lady 
— who had fed herself from childhood with the shad- 
owy food of aristocratic reminiscences, and whose re- 
ligion it was that a lady’s hand soils itself irremedi- 
ably by doing aught for bread — this born lady, after 
sixty years of narrowing means, is fain to step down 
from her pedestal of imaginary rank. Poverty, tread- 
ing closely at her heels for a lifetime, has come up 
with her at last. She must earn her own food, or 
starve! And we have stolen upon Miss Hepzibah 
Pyncheon, too irreverently, at the instant of time 
when the patrician lady is to be transformed into the 
plebeian woman. 

In this republican country, amid the fluctuating 
waver of our social life, somebody is always at the 
drowning-point. The tragedy is enacted with as con- 
tinual a repetition as that of a popular drama on a 
holiday ; and, nevertheless, is felt as deeply, per- 
haps, as when an hereditary noble sinks below his or- 
der. More deeply ; since, with us, rank is the grosser 
substance of wealth and a splendid establishment, and 
has no spiritual existence after the death of these, but 
dies hopelessly along with them. And, therefore, 
since we have been unfortunate enough to introduce 
our heroine at so inauspicious a juncture, we would 
entreat for a mood of due solemnity in the spectators 
of her fate. Let us behold, in poor Hepzibah, the im- 
memorial lady, — two hundred years old, on this side 
of the water, and thrice as many on the other, — with 
her antique portraits, pedigrees, coats of arms, records 
and traditions, and her claim, as joint heiress, to that 
princely territory at the eastward, no longer a wilder 


56 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


ness, but a populous fertility, — born, too, in Pyncheon 
Street, under the Pyncheon Elm, and in the Pyncheon 
House, where she has spent all her days, — reduced 
now, in that very house, to be the hucksteress of a 
cent-shop. 

This business of setting up a petty shop is almost 
the only resource of women, in circumstances at all 
similar to those of our unfortunate recluse. With her 
near-sightedness, and those tremulous fingers of hers, 
at once inflexible and delicate, she could not be 4 
seamstress; although her sampler, of fifty years gone 
by, exhibited some of the most recondite specimens of 
ornamental needlework. A school for little children 
had been often in her thoughts ; and, at one time, she 
had begun a review of her early studies in the New 
England Primer, with a view to prepare herself for 
the office of instructress. But the love of children had 
never been quickened in Hepzibah’s heart, and was now 
torpid, if not extinct; she watched the little people 
of the neighborhood from her chamber-window, and 
doubted whether she could tolerate a more intimate 
acquaintance with them. Besides, in our day, the 
very A BC has become a science greatly too abstruse 
to be any longer taught by pointing a pin from letter 
to letter. A modern child could teach old Hepzibah 
more than old Hepzibah could teach the child. So— 
with many a cold, deep heart-quake at the idea of at 
last coming into sordid contact with the world, from 
which she had so long kept aloof, while every added 
day of seclusion had rolled another stone against the 
eavern-door of her hermitage —the poor thing be- 
thought herself of the ancient shop-window, the rusty 
scales, and dusty till. She might have held back a 
little longer; but another circumstance, not yet hinted 










































































SHE STOLE ON TIPTOE TO THE WINDOW, AS GAUTIOUSLY 

AS IF SHE CONCEIVED SOME BLOODY-MINDED VILLAIN 

TO BE WATCHING BEHIND THE ELM-TREE, WITH INTENT 
TO TAKE HER LIFE 


Jian 
J L 


j vate 
Ny ? 


i 





THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW. 5t 


at, had somewhat hastened her decision. Her humble 
preparations, therefore, were duly made, and the enter- 
prise was now to be commenced. Nor was she entitled 
to complain of any remarkable singularity in her fate ; 
for, in the town of her nativity, we might point to sev- 
eral little shops of a similar description, some of them 
in houses as ancient as that of the Seven Gables; and 
one or two, it may be, where a decayed gentlewoman 
stands behind the counter, as grim an image of family 
pride as Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon herself. 

It was overpoweringly ridiculous — we must hon- 
estly confess it — the deportment of the maiden lady 
while setting her shop in order for the public eye. 
She stole on tiptoe to the window, as cautiously as if 
she conceived some bloody-minded viliain to be watch- 
ing behind the elm-tree, with intent to take her life. 
Stretching out her long, lank arm, she put a paper of 
pearl buttons, a jew’s-harp, or whatever the small ar- 
ticle might be, in its destined place, and straightway 
vanished back into the dusk, as if the world need 
never hope for another glimpse of her. It might have 
been fancied, indeed, that she expected to minister to 
the wants of the community unseen, like a disem- 
bodied divinity or enchantress, holding forth her bar- 
gains to the reverential and awe-stricken purchaser in 
an invisible hand. But Hepzibah had no such flatter- 
ing dream. She was well aware that she must ul- 
timately come forward, and stand revealed in her 
proper individuality; but, like other sensitive persons, 
she could not bear to be observed in the gradual pro- 
cess, and chose rather to flash forth on the world’s as 
tonished gaze at once. 

The inevitable moment was not much longer to be 


delayed. The sunshine might now be seen stealing 


58 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


down the front of the opposite house, from the win 
dows of which came a reflected gleam, struggling 
through the boughs of the elm-tree, and enlightening 
the interior of the shop more distinctly than hereto- 
fore. The town appeared to be waking up. A baker’s 
eart had already rattled through the street, chasing 
away the latest vestige of night’s sanctity with the 
jingle-jangle of its dissonant bells. A milkman was 
distributing the contents of his cans from door to 
door; and the harsh peal of a fisherman’s conch shell 
was heard far off, around the corner. None of these 
tokens escaped Hepzibah’s notice. The moment had 
arrived. To delay longer would be only to lengthen 
out her misery. Nothing remained, except to take 
down the bar from the shop-door, leaving the entrance 
free — more than free — welcome, as if all were 
household friends —to every passer-by, whose eyes 
might be attracted by the commodities at the window. 
This last act Hepzibah now performed, letting the bar 
fall with what smote upon her excited nerves as a 
most astounding clatter. Then —as if the only bar- 
rier betwixt herself and the world had been thrown 
down, and a flood of evil consequences would come 
tumbling through the gap—she fled into the inner 
parlor, threw herself into the ancestral elbow-chair, 
and wept. 

Our miserable old Hepzibah! It is a heavy annoy- 
ance to a writer, who endeavors to represent nature, 
its various attitudes and circumstances, in a reasona- 
bly correct outline and true coloring, that so much of 
the mean and ludicrous should be hopelessly mixed up 
with the purest pathos which life anywhere supplies 
to him. What tragic dignity, for example, can be 
wrought into a scene like this! How can we elevate 


THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW. 59 


eur history of retribution for the sin of long ago, when, 
as one of our most prominent figures, we are compelled 
to introduce — not a young and lovely woman, nor even 
the stately remains of beauty, storm-shattered by af- 
fliction —but a gaunt, sallow, rusty-jointed maiden, iv 
a long-waisted silk gown, and with the strange horro1 
of a turban on her head! Her visage is not even 
ugly. It is redeemed from insignificance only by the 
contraction of her eyebrows into a near-sighted scowl. 
And, finally, her great life-trial seems to be, that, 
after sixty years of idleness, she finds it convenient 
to earn comfortable bread by setting up a shop ina 
small way. Nevertheless, if we look through all the 
heroic fortunes of mankind, we shall find this same 
entanglement of something mean and trivial with 
whatever is noblest in joy or sorrow. Life is made 
up of marble and mud. And, without all the deeper 
trust in a comprehensive sympathy above us, we might 
hence be led to suspect the insult of a sneer, as well 
as an immitigable frown, on the iron countenance of 
fate. What is called poetic insight is the gift of dis- 
cerning, in this sphere of strangely mingled elements, 
the beauty and the majesty which are compelled to as 
sume a garb so sordid. 


IIT. 
THE FIRST CUSTOMER. 


Miss Hepzipau PyNcHEON sat in the oaken elbow 
chair, with her hands over her face, giving way to 
that heavy down-sinking of the heart which most per- 
sons have experienced, when the image of hope itself 
seems ponderously moulded of lead, on the eve of an 
enterprise at once doubtful and momentous. She 
was suddenly startled by the tinkling alarum — high, 
sharp, and irregular —of a little bell. The maiden lady 
arose upon her feet, as pale as a ghost at cock-crow ; 
for she was an enslaved spirit, and this the talisman 
to which she owed obedience. ‘This little bell, — to 
speak in plainer terms, —being fastened over the shop- 
door, was so contrived as to vibrate by means of a steel 
spring, and thus convey notice to the inner regions of 
the house when any customer should cross the thresh- 
old. Its ugly and spiteful little din (heard now for 
the first time, perhaps, since Hepzibah’s periwigged 
predecessor had retired from trade) at once set every 
nerve of her body in responsive and tumultuous vibra- 
tion. The crisis was upon her! Her first customer 
was at the door ! 

Without giving herself time for a second thought, 
she rushed into the shop, pale, wild, desperate in ges- 
ture and expression, scowling portentously, and look- 
ing far better qualified to do fierce battle with a house< 
breaker than to stand smiling behind the counter, 


THE FIRST CUSTOMER. 61 


bartering small wares for a copper recompense. Any 
ordinary customer, indeed, would have turned his 
back and fled. And yet there was nothing fierce in 
Hepzibah’s poor old heart; nor had she, at the mo- 
ment, a single bitter thought against the world at 
large, or one individual man or woman. She wished 
them all well, but wished, too, that she herself were 
done with them, and in her quiet grave. 

The applicant, by this time, stood within the door. 
way. Coming freshly, as he did, out of the morning 
light, he appeared to have brought some of its cheery 
influences into the shop along with him. It was a 
slender young man, not more than one or two and 
twenty years old, with rather a grave and thoughtful 
expression for his years, but likewise a springy alac- 
rity and vigor. These qualities were not only per- 
ceptible, physically, in his make and motions, but 
made themselves felt almost immediately in his char- 
acter. A brown beard, not too silken in its texture, 
fringed his chin, but as yet without completely hiding 
it; he wore a short mustache, too, and his dark, high- 
featured countenance looked all the better for these 
natural ornaments. As for his dress, it was of the 
simplest kind ; a summer sack of cheap and ordinary 
material, thin checkered pantaloons, and a straw hat 
by no means of the finest braid. Oak Hall might 
have supplied his entire equipment. He was chiefly 
marked as a gentleman—if such, indeed, he made 
any claim to be — by the rather remarkable whiteness 
and nicety of his clean linen. 

He met the scowl of old Hepzibah without apparent 
alarm, as having heretofore encountered it and found 
it harmless. 

“¢So, my dear Miss Pyncheon,” said the daguerreo 


62 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


typist, — for it was that sole other occupant ot tha 
seven-gabled mansion, — ‘I am glad to see that. you 
have not shrunk from your good purpose. I merely 
look in to offer my best wishes, and to ask if I can ase 
sist you any further in your preparations.” 

People in difficulty and distress, or in any manner 
at odds with the world, can endure a vast amount of 
harsh treatment, and perhaps be only the stronger for 
it; whereas they give way at once before the simplest 
expression of what they perceive to be genuine sym- 
pathy. So it proved with poor Hepzibah; for, when 
she saw the young man’s smile, —looking so much 
the brighter on a thoughtful face, —and heard his 
kindly tone, she broke first into a hysteric giggle and 
then began to sob. 

“ Ah, Mr. Holgrave,” cried she, as soon as she could 
speak, “I never can go through with it! Never, 
never, never! JI wish I were dead, and in the old 
family-tomb, with all my forefathers! With my 
father, and my mother, and my sister! Yes, and with 

ny brother, who had far better find me there than 
here! The world is too chill and hard,—and I am 
too old, and too feeble, and too hopeless!” 

“Oh, believe me, Miss Hepzibah,” said the young 
man, quietly, “these feelings will not trouble you any 
longer, after you are once fairly in the midst of your 
enterprise. They are unavoidable at this moment, 
standing, as you do, on the outer verge of your long 
seclusion, and peopling the world with ugly shapes, 
which you will soon find to be as unreal as the giants 
and ogres of a child’s story-book. I find nothing so 
singular in life, as that everything appears to lose its 
substance the instant one actually grapples with it. So 
it will be with what you think so terrible.” 


THE FIRST CUSVUOMER. 63 


“But I am a woman!” said Hepzibah, piteously. 
« T was going to say, a lady, — but I consider that as 
past.” 

“Well; no matter if it be past!” answered the 
artist, a strange gleam of half-hidden sarcasm flashing 
through the kindliness of his manner. ‘ Let it go! 
You are the better without it. I speak frankly, my 
dear Miss Pyncheon! for are we not friends? I look 
upon this as one of the fortunate days of your life. 
It ends an epoch and begins one. Hitherto, the life- 
blood has been gradually chilling in your veins as you 
sat aloof, within your circle of gentility, while the rest 
of the world was fighting out its battle with one kind 
of necessity or another. Henceforth, you will at least 
have the sense of healthy and natural effort for a pur- 
pose, and of lending your strength — be it great or 
small—to the united struggle of mankind. This is 
success, — all the success that anybody meets with!” 

“It is natural enough, Mr. Holgrave, that you 
should have ideas like these,” rejoined Hepzibah, 
drawing up her gaunt figure, with slightly offended 
dignity. ‘You are a man, a young man, and brought 
up, I suppose, as almost everybody is nowadays, with 
a view to seeking your fortune. But I was born a 
lady, and have always lived one; no matter in what 
narrowness of means, always a lady!” 

“ But I was not born a gentleman; neither have I 
lived like one,” said Holgrave, slightly smiling ; “so, 
my dear madam, you will hardly expect me to sym 
pathize with sensibilities of this kind; though, unless 
I deceive myself, | have some imperfect comprehen- 
sion of them. These names of gentleman and lady 
had a meaning, in the past history of the world, and 
conferred privileges, desirable or otherwise, on those 


64 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


entitled to bear them. In the present— and still 
more in the future condition of society — they imply, 
not privilege, but restriction ! ” 

‘These are new notions,” said the old gentlewoman, 
shaking her head. ‘I shall never understand them; 
neither do I wish it.” 

“We will cease to speak of them, then,’ replied 
the artist, with a friendlier smile than his last one, 
“and I will leave you to feel whether it is not better 
to be a true woman than a lady. Do you really think, 
Miss Hepzibah, that any lady of your family has ever 
done a more heroic thing, since this house was built, 
than you are performing in it to-day? Never; and if 
the Pyncheons had always acted so nobly, I doubt 
whether an old wizard Maule’s anathema, of which 
you told me once, would have had much weight with 
Providence against them.” 

* Ah!—no, no!” said Hepzibah, not displeased at 
this allusion to the sombre dignity of an inherited curse. 
“Tf old Maule’s ghost, or a descendant of his, could 
see me behind the counter to-day, he would call it the 
fulfilment of his worst wishes. But I thank you for 
your kindness, Mr. Holgrave, and will do my utmost 
to be a good shop-keeper.” 

*“‘ Pray do,” said Holgrave, “and let me have the 
pleasure of being your first customer. I am about 
taking a walk to the sea-shore, before going to my 
rooms, where I misuse Heaven’s blessed sunshine by 
tracing out human features through its agency. A 
few of those biscuits dipt in sea-water, will be just 
what I need for breakfast. What is the price of half 
a dozen ?”’ 

“Let me be a lady a moment longer,” replied Hep- 
zibah, with a manner of antique stateliness to which 


THE FIRST CUSTOMER. 65 


a melancholy smile lent a kind of grace. She put the 
biscuits into his hand, but rejected the compensation. 
* A Pyncheon must not, at all events under her fore- 
fathers’ roof, receive money for a morsel of bread 
from her only friend!” 

Holgrave took his departure, leaving her, for the 
moment, with spirits not quite so much depressed. 
Soon, however, they had subsided nearly to then 
former dead level. With a beating heart, she listened 
to the footsteps of early passengers, which now began 
to be frequent along the street. Once or twice they 
seemed to linger; these strangers, or neighbors, as 
the case might be, were looking at the display of toys 
and petty commodities in Hepzibah’s shop - window. 
She was doubly tortured; in part, with a sense ot 
overwhelming shame that strange and unloving eye; 
should have the privilege of gazing, and partly because 
the idea occurred to her, with ridiculous importunity, 
that the window was not arranged so skilfully, nor 
nearly to so much advantage, as it might have been. 
It seemed asif the whole fortune or failure of her shop 
might depend on the display of a different set of arti- 
cles, or substituting a fairer apple for one which ap- 
peared to be specked. So she made the change, and 
straightway fancied that everything was spoiled by 
it; not recognizing that it was the nervousness of the 
juncture, and her own native squeamishness as an old 
maid, that wrought all the seeming mischief. 

Anon, there was an encounter, just at the door-step, 
betwixt two laboring men, as their rough voices denote¢. 
them to be. After some slight talk about their own 
affairs, one of them chanced to notice the shop-window, 
and directed the other’s attention to it. 

“See here!” cried he; “ what do you think of 


VOL. IIL 5 


66 THE HOUSE OF FHE SEVEN GABLES. 


this? Trade seems to be looking up in Pyncheon 
Street !”” 

“Well, well, this is a sight, to be sure!” exclaimed 
the other. ‘In the old Pyncheon House, and under. 
neath the Pyncheon Elm! Who would have thought 
it? Old Maid Pyncheon is setting up a cent-shop!” 

“ Will she make it go, think you, Dixey?” said his 
friend. “I don’t call it a very good stand. There’s 
another shop just round the corner.” 

“Make it go!” cried Dixey, with a most cone 
temptuous expression, as if the very idea were impos. 
sible to be conceived. “Not a bit of it! Why, her 
face — I’ve seen it, for I dug her garden for her one 
year — her face is enough to frighten the Old Nick 
himself, if he had ever so great a mind to trade with 
her. People can’t stand it, I tell you! She scowls 
dreadfully, reason or none, out of pure ugliness of 
temper ! ” 

“ Well, that’s not so much matter,” remarked the 
other man. ‘These sour-tempered folks are mostly 
handy at business, and know pretty well what they are 
about. But, as you say, I don’t think she ’I1 do much. 
This business of keeping cent-shops is overdone, like 
all other kinds of trade, handicraft, and bodily labor. 
I know it, to my cost! My wife kept a cent-shop 
three months, and lost five dollars on her outlay!” 

“Poor business!” responded Dixey, in a tone as if 
he were shaking his head, — “ poor business !” 

For some reason or other, not very easy to analyze 
there had hardly been so bitter a pang in all her pre 
vious misery about the matter as what thrilled Hepzi 
bah’s heart, on overhearing the above conversation. 
The testimony in regard to her scowl was frightfully 
unportant; it seemed to hold up her image wholly re 


THE FIRST CUSTOMER. 67 


lieved from the false light of her self-partialities, and 
so hideous that she dared not look at it. She was ab. 
surdly hurt, moreover, by the slight and idle effect 
that her setting up shop — an event of such breathless 
interest to herself — appeared to have upon the pub- 
lic, of which these two men were the nearest repre 
sentatives. A glance; a passing word or two; 4 
coarse laugh; and she was doubtless forgotten before 
they turned the corner! They cared nothing for her 
dignity, and just as little for her degradation. Then, 
also, the augury of ill-success, uttered from the sure 
wisdom of experience, fell upon her half-dead hope 
like a clod into a grave. The man’s wife had already 
tried the same experiment, and failed! How could 
the born lady, — the recluse of half a lifetime, utterly 
unpractised in the world, at sixty years of age, — how 
could she ever dream of succeeding, when the hard, 
vulgar, keen, busy, hackneyed New England womap 
had lost five dollars on her little outlay! Success pre 
sented itself as an impossibility, and the hope of it ax 
a wild hallucination. 

Some malevolent spirit, doing his utmost to drive 
Hepzibah mad, unrolled before her imagination a kind 
of panorama, representing the great thoroughfare of a 
city all astir with customers. So many and so magnif: 
icent shops as there were! Groceries, toy-shops, dry 
goods stores, with their immense panes of plate-glass: 
their gorgeous fixtures, their vast and complete assorr 
ments of merchandise, in which fortunes had been in 
vested; and those noble mirrors at the farther end 
of each establishment, doubling all this wealth by a 
brightly burnished vista of unrealities! On one side 
of the street this splendid bazaar, with a multitude of 
perfumed and glossy salesmen, smirking, smiling, bow: 


68 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


ing, and measuring out the goods. On the other, the 
dusky eld House of the Seven Gables, with the anti- 
quated shop-window under its projecting story, and 
Hepzibah herself, in a gown of rusty black silk, behind 
the counter, scowling at the world as it went by! This 
mighty contrast thrust itself forward as a fair expres- 
sion of the odds against which she was to begin her 
struggle for a subsistence. Success? Preposterous! 
She would never think of it again! The house might 
just as well be buried in an eternal fog while all other 
houses had the sunshine on them ; for not a foot would 
ever cross the threshold, nor a hand so much as try 
the door ! 

But, at this instant, the shop-bell, right over her 
head, tinkled as if it were bewitched. The old gentle- 
woman’s heart seemed to be attached to the same steel 
spring, for it went through a series of sharp jerks, in 
unison with the sound. The door was thrust open, 
although no human form was perceptible on the other 
side of the half-window. Hepzibah, nevertheless, 
stood at a gaze, with her hands clasped, looking very 
much as if she had summoned up an evil spirit, and 
were afraid, yet resolved, to hazard the encounter. 

‘“‘ Heaven help me!” she groaned, mentally. ‘ Now 
is my hour of need!” 

The door, which moved with difficulty on its creake 
ing and rusty hinges, being forced quite open, a 
square and sturdy little urchin became apparent, with 
cheeks as red as an apple. He was clad rather shab- 
bily (but, as it seemed, more owing to his mother’s 
carelessness than his father’s poverty), in a blue apron, 
very wide and short trousers, shoes somewhat out at 
the toes, and a chip-hat, with the frizzles of his curly 
hair sticking through its crevices. A book and a 





1 fal! ye 


W 


“no 


MENTALLY 


1»? 


) 


SHE GROANED 
HOUR OF NEED 


{» 


‘HEAVEN HELP ME 





/ 
\ 


. 


THE FIRST CUSTOMER. 68 


gmall slate, under his arm, indicated that he was on 
his way to school. He stared at Hepzibah a moment, 
as an elder customer than himself would have been 
likely enough to do, not knowing what to make of the 
tragic attitude and queer scowl wherewith she re 
garded him. 

“ Well, child,” said she, taking heart at sight of ¢ 
personage so little formidable, —“‘ well, my child, what 
did you wish for ?” 

‘That Jim Crow there in the window,” answered 
the urchin, holding out a cent, and pointing to the 
gingerbread figure that had attracted his notice, as he 
loitered along to school; “the one that has not a 
broken foot.” 

So Hepzibah put forth her lank arm, and, taking 
the effigy from the shop-window, delivered it to her 
first customer. 

‘No matter for the money,” said she, giving him a 
little push towards the door; for her old gentility was 
contumaciously squeamish at sight of the copper coin, 
and, besides, it seemed such pitiful meanness to take 
the child’s pocket-money in exchange for a bit of stale 
gingerbread. ‘No matter for the cent. You are 
welcome to Jim Crow.” 

The child, staring with round eyes at this instance 
of liberality, wholly unprecedented in his large ex- 
perience of cent-shops, took the man of gingerbread, 
and quitted the premises. No sooner had he reached 
the sidewalk (little cannibal that he was!) than Jim 
Crow’s head was in his mouth. As he had not been 
eareful to shut the door, Hepzibah was at the pains of 
closing it after him, with a pettish ejaculation or two 
about the troublesomeness of young people, and pare 
ticularly of small boys. She had just placed anothet 


70 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


representative of the renowned Jim Crow at the win 
dow, when again the shop-bell tinkled clamorously, 
and again the door being thrust open, with its charac- 
teristic jerk and jar, disclosed the same sturdy little 
urchin who, precisely two minutes ago, had made his 
exit. The crumbs and discoloration of the cannibal 
feast, as yet hardly consummated, were exceedingly 
visible about his mouth. 

“ What is it now, child?” asked the maiden lady, 
rather impatiently ; “did you come back to shut the 
door ?” 

“No,” answered the urchin, pointing to the figure 
that had just been put up; “I want that other Jim 
Vrow.”’ 

“Well, here it is for you,” said Hepzibah, reach- 
mg it down; but recognizing that this pertinacious 
gustomer would not quit her on any other terms, so 
long as she had a gingerbread figure in her shop, she 
partly be back her extended hand, ‘‘ Where is the 
vent ?’ 

The little boy had the cent ready, but, like : a true- 
born Yankee, would have preferred th the better bargain 
to the worse.” Looking somewhat chagrined, napa put 
the coin into Hepzibah’s hand, and departed, sending 
the second Jim Crow in quest of the former one. The 
new shopkeeper dropped the first solid result of her 
commercial enterprise into the till. It was done! 
The sordid stain of that copper coin could never be 
washed away from her palm. The little school-boy, 
aided by the impish figure of the negro dancer, had 
wrought an irreparable ruin. The structure of an- 
cient aristocracy had been demolished by-him,even_as _ 
if his childish gripe had torn down the seven-gabled 
mansion. Now let Hepzibah turn the old Pyncheor 


THE FIRST CUSTOMER. 71 


portraits with their faces to the wall, and take the map 
of her Eastern territory to kindle the kitchen fire, and 
blow up the flame with the empty breath of her ances- 
tral traditions! What had she to do with ancestry? 
Nothing; no more than with posterity! No lady, 
now, but simply Hepzibah Pyncheon, a forlorn old 
maid, and keeper of a cent-shop! 

Nevertheless, even while she paraded these ideas 
somewhat ostentatiously through her mind, it is alto- 
gether surprising what a calmness had come over her. 
The anxiety and misgivings which had tormented her, 
whether asleep or in melancholy day-dreams, ever 
since her project began to take an aspect of solidity, 
had now vanished quite away. She felt the novelty 
of her position, indeed, but no longer with disturbance 
or affright. Now and then, there came a thrill of al- 
most youthful enjoyment. It was the invigorating 
breath of a fresh outward atmosphere, after the long 
torpor and monotonous seclusion of her life. So 
wholesome is effort! So miraculous the strength that 
we do not know of! The healthiest glow that Hepzi- 
bah had known for years had come now in the dreaded 
crisis, when, for the first time, she had put forth her 
hand to help herself. The little circlet of the school- 
boy’s copper coin —dim and lustreless though it was, 
with the small services which it had been doing here 
and there about the world —had proved a talisman, 
fragrant with good, and deserving to be set in gold 
and worn next her heart. It was as potent, and per. 
haps endowed with the same kind of efficacy, as a gal- 
vanic ring! Hepzibah, at all events, was indebted to 
its subtile operation both in body and spirit ; so much 
the more, as it inspired her with energy to get some 
breakfast, at which, still the better to keep up her 


72 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


courage, she allowed herself an extra spoonful in het 
infusion of black tea. 

Her introductory day of shop-keeping did not run 
on, however, without many and serious interruptions 
of this mood of cheerful vigor. As a general rule, 
Providence-seldom_vouchsafes to mortals any more 
than just that degree of encouragement, which suffices 
to keep them at a reasonably full—exertion—of-thei___ 
powers. In the case of our old gentlewoman, after 
the éxcitement of new effort had subsided, the de- 
spondency of her whole life threatened, ever and anon, 
to return. It was like the heavy mass of clouds which 
we may often see obscuring the sky, and making a 
gray twilight everywhere, until, towards nightfall, it 
yields temporarily to a glimpse of sunshine. But, al- 
ways, the envious cloud strives to gather again across 
the streak of celestial azure. 

Customers came in, as the forenoon advanced, but 
rather slowly ; in some cases, too, it must be owned, 
with little satisfaction either to themselves or Miss 
Hepzibah ; nor, on the whole, with an aggregate of 
very rich emolument to the till. A little girl, sent by 
her mother to match a skein of cotton thread, of a pe- 
culiar hue, took one that the near-sighted old lady pro- 
nounced extremely like, but soon came running back, 
with a blunt and cross message, that it would not do, 
and, besides, was very rotten! Then, there was a pale, 
care- wrinkled woman, not old but haggard, and al- 
ready with streaks of gray among her hair, like sil- 
ver ribbons; one of those women, naturally delicate, 
whom you at once recognize as worn to death by a 
brute — probably a drunken brute — of a husband, 
and at least nine children. She wanted a few pounds 
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74 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


“Well,” said Hepzibah, heaving a deep sigh, “ per 
haps I had! ” 

Several times, moreover, besides the above instance 
her lady-like sensibilities were seriously infringed upon 
by the familiar, if not rude, tone with which people 
addressed her. They evidently considered themselves 
not merely her equals, but her patrons and superiors. 
Now, Hepzibah had unconsciously flattered herself 
with the idea that there would be a gleam or halo, of 
some kind or other, about her person, which would in- 
sure an obeisance to her sterling gentility, or, at least, 
a tacit recognition of it. On the other hand, nothing 
tortured her more intolerably than when this recogni- 
tion was too prominently expressed. To one or two 
rather officious offers of sympathy, her responses were 
little short of acrimonious; and, we regret to say, 
Hepzibah was thrown into a positively unchristian 
state of mind by the suspicion that one of her cus: 
tomers was drawn to the shop, not by any real need 
of the article which she pretended to seek, but by 
a wicked wish to stare at her. The vulgar creature 
was determined to see for herself what sort of a figure 
a mildewed piece of aristocracy, after wasting all the 
bloom and much of the decline of her life apart from 
the world, would cut behind a counter. In this par. 
ticular case, however mechanical and innocuous it 
might be at other times, Hepzibah’s contortion of brow 
served her in good stead. 

“‘T never was so frightened in my life!” said the 
curious customer, in describing the incident to one of 
her acquaintances. ‘She’s a real old vixen, take my 
word of it! She says little, to be sure; but if you 
could only see the mischief in her eye!” 

On the whole, therefore, her new experience led our 


THE FIRST CUSTOMER. 75 


decayed gentlewoman to very disagreeable conclusions 
as to the temper and manners of what she termed the 
lower classes, whom heretofore she had looked down 
upon with a gentle and pitying complaisance, as her- 
self occupying a sphere of unquestionable superiority. 
But, unfortunately, she had likewise to struggle 
against a bitter emotion of a directly opposite kind: a 
sentiment of virulence, we mean, towards the idle aris- 
tocracy to which it had so recently been her pride to 
belong. When a lady, in a delicate and costly sum 
mer garb, with a floating veil and gracefully sway- 
ing gown, and, altogether, an etherial lightness that 
made you look at her beautifully slippered feet, to 
see whether she trod on the dust or floated in the air, 
—— when such a vision happened to pass through this 
retired street, leaving it tenderly and delusively fra- 
grant with her passage, as if a bouquet of tea-roses 
had been borne along, — then again, it is to be feared, 
old Hepzibah’s scowl could no longer vindicate itself 
entirely on the plea of near-sightedness. 

“For what end,” thought she, giving vent to that 
feeling of hostility which is the only real abasement 
of the poor in presence of the rich, —‘“‘ for what good 
end, in the wisdom of Providence, does that woman 
live? Must the whole world toil, that the palms of 
her hands may be kept white and delicate ?” 

Then, ashamed and penitent, she hid her face. 

“May God forgive me!” said she. 

Doubtless, God did forgive her. But, taking the 
inward and outward history of the first half-day into 
consideration, Hepzibah began to fear that the shop 
would prove her ruin in a moral and religious point 
of view, without contributing very essentially towards 
ven her temporal welfare. 


IV. 
A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER. 


TowaRpDs noon, Hepzibah saw an elderly gentle 
man, large and portly, and of remarkably dignified 
demeanor, passing slowly along on the opposite side 
of the white and dusty street. On coming within the 
shadow of the Pyncheon Elm, he stopt, and (taking 
off his hat, meanwhile, to wipe the perspiration from 
his brow) seemed to scrutinize, with especial interest, 
the dilapidated and rusty-visaged House of the Seven 
Gables. He himself, in a very different style, was as 
well worth looking at as the house. No better model 
need be sought, nor could have been found, of a very 
high order of respectability, which, by some indescrib- 
able magic, not merely expressed itself in his looks 
and gestures, but even governed the fashion of his 
garments, and rendered them all proper and essential 
to the man. Without appearing to differ, in any 
tangible way, from other people’s clothes, there was 
yet a wide and rich gravity about them that must 
have been a characteristic of the wearer, since it could 
not be defined as pertaining either to the cut or ma- 
terial. His gold-headed cane, too, —a serviceable 
staff, of dark polished wood, — had similar traits, ana, 
had it chosen to take a walk by itself, would have 
been recognized anywhere as a tolerably adequate rep- 
resentative of its master. This character — which 


showed itself so strikingly in everything about him 


A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER. 1? 


and the effect of which we seek to convey to the reader 
— went no deeper than his station, habits of life, and 
external circumstances. One perceived him to be a 
personage of marked influence and authority; and, 
especially, you could feel just as certain that he was 
opulent as if he had exhibited his bank account, or 
as if you had seen him touching the twigs of the Pyn 
cheon Elm, and, Midas-like, transmuting them to gold. 

In his youth, he had probably been considered a 
handsome man; at his present age, his brow was too 
heavy, his temples too bare, his remaining hair too 
gray, his eye too cold, his lips too closely compressed, 
to bear any relation to mere personal beauty. He 
would have made a good and massive portrait ; better 
now, perhaps, than at any previous period of his life, 
although his look might grow positively harsh in the 
process of being fixed upon the canvas. . The artist 
would have found it desirable to study his face, and 
prove its capacity for varied expression; to darken it 
with a frown, — to kindle it up with a smile. 

While the elderly gentleman stood looking at the 
Pyncheon House, both the frown and the smile passed 
successively over his countenance. His eye rested on 
the shop-window, and putting up a pair of gold-bowed 
spectacles, which he held in his hand, he minutely sur. 
veyed Hepzibah’s little arrangement of toys and com- 
modities. At first it seemed not to please him, — nay, 
to cause him exceeding displeasure,— and yet, the 
very next moment, he smiled. While the latter ex. 
pression was yet on his lips, he caught a glimpse of 
Hepzibah, who had involuntarily bent forward to the 
window; and then the smile changed from acrid and 
disagreeable to the sunniest complacency and benevo- 
lence. He bowed, with a happy mixture of dignity 
and courteous kindliness, and pursued his way. 


78 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 
“There he is!” said Hepzibah io herself, gulping 


down a very bitter emotion, and, since she could not 
rid herself of it, trying to drive it back into her heart. 
“ What does he think of it, I wonder? Does it please 
him? Ah! he is looking back!” 

The gentleman had paused in the street, and turned. 
himself half about, still with his eyes fixed on the 
shop-window. In fact, he wheeled wholly round, and 
commenced a step or two, as if designing to enter the 
shop; but, as it chanced, his purpose was anticipated 
by Hepzibah’s first customer, the little cannibal of Jim 
Crow, who, staring up at the window, was irresistibly 
attracted by an elephant of gingerbread. What a 
grand appetite had this small urchin!—Two Jim 
Crows immediately after breakfast!—and now an 
elephant, as a preliminary whet before dinner! By 
the time this latter purchase was completed, the el- 
derly gentleman had resumed his way, and turned the 
street corner. 

“Take it as you like, Cousin Jaffrey!” muttered 
the maiden lady, as she drew back, after cautiously 
thrusting out her head, and looking up and down the 
street, — “take it as you like! You have seen my 
little shop-window! Well! —what have you to say? 
—is not the Pyncheon House my own, while 1’m 
alive?” 

After this incident, Hepzibah retreated to the back 
varlor, where she at first caught up a half-finished 
stocking, and began knitting at it with nervous and 
irregular jerks; but quickly finding herself at odds 
with the stitches, she threw it aside, and walked hur- 
riedly about the room. At length, she paused before 
the portrait of the stern old Puritan, her ancestor, and 
fhe founder of the house. In one sense, this picture 


A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER. 79 


had almost faded into the canvas, and hidden itself 
behind the duskiness of age; in another, she could 
not but fancy that it had been growing more promi 
nent, and strikingly expressive, ever since her earliest 
familiarity with it asa child. For, while the physica) 
outline and substance were darkening away from the 
beholder’s eye, the bold, hard, and, at the same time, 
indirect character of the man seemed to be brought 
out in a kind of spiritual relief. Such an effect may 
occasionally be observed in pictures of antique date. 
They acquire a look which an artist (if he have 
anything like the complacency of artists nowadays) 
would never dream of presenting to a patron as his 
own characteristic expression, but which, nevertheless, 
we at once recognize as reflecting the unlovely truth 
of a human soul. In such cases, the painter’s deep 
conception of his subject’s inward traits has wrought 
itself into the essence of the picture, and is seen after 
the superficial coloring has been rubbed off by time. 

While gazing at the portrait, Hepzibah trembled 
under its eye. Her hereditary reverence made her 
afraia to judge the character of the original so harshly 
as a perception of the truth compelled her to do. But 
still she gazed, because the face of the picture enabled 
her — at least, she fancied so-—to read more accu- 
rately, and to a greater depth, the face which she had 
lust seen in the street. 

“This is the very man!” murmured she to herself, 
* Let Jaffrey Pyncheon smile as he will, there is that 
look beneath! Put on him a skull-cap, and a band, 
and a black cloak, and a Bible in one hand and a 
sword in the other,—then let Jaffrey smile as he 
might, — nobody would doubt that it was the old Pyn- 
theon come again! He has proved himself the very 


80 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


«\ 
man to build up a new house ! Perhaps, too, to draw 
down a new curse!” | 

Thus did Hepzibah bewilder herself with these 
fantasies of the old time. She had dwelt too much 
alone, — too long in the Pyncheon House, — until her 
very brain was impregnated with the dry-rot of its 
timbers. She needed a walk along the noonday street 
to keep her sane. 

By the spell of contrast, another portrait rose up 
before her, painted with more daring flattery than any 
artist would have ventured upon, but yet so delicate. 
ly touched that the likeness remained perfect. Mal- 
bone’s miniature, though from the same original, was 
far inferior to Hepzibah’s air-drawn picture, at which 
affection and sorrowful remembrance wrought together. 
Soft, mildly, and cheerfully contemplative, with full, 
red lips, just on the verge of a smile, which the eyes 
seemed to herald by a gentle kindling-up of their orbs! 
Feminine traits, moulded inseparably with those of the 
other sex! The miniature, likewise, had this last pe- 
culiarity; so that you inevitably thought of the orig- 
inal as resembling his mother, and she a lovely and 
lovable woman, with perhaps some beautiful infirmity 
of character, that made it all the pleasanter to know 
and easier to love her. 

“Yes,” thought Hepzibah, with grief of which it 
was only the more tolerable portion that welled up 
from her heart to her eyelids, “they persecuted his 
mother in him! He never was a Pyncheon !” 

But here the shop-bell rang; it was like a sound 
from a remote distance,— so far had Hepzibah de- 
scended into the sepulchral depths of her reminis- 
cences. On entering the shop, she found an old man 
there, a humble resident of Pyncheon Street, and 


A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER. 81 


whom, for a great many years past, she had suffered 
to be a kind of familiar of the house. He was an ime 
memorial personage, who seemed always to have had 
a white head and wrinkles, and never to have pos- 
sessed but a single tooth, and that a half-decayed one, 
in the front of the upper jaw. Well advanced as 
Hepzibah was, she could not remember when Uncle 
Venner, as the neighborhood called him, had not gone 
up and down the street, stooping a little and drawing 
his feet heavily over the gravel or pavement. But 
still there was something tough and vigorous about 
him, that not only kept him in daily breath, but en- 
abled him to fill a place which would else have been 
vacant in the apparently crowded world. To go of 
errands with his slow and shuffling gait, which made 
you doubt how he ever was to arrive anywhere; to 
saw a small household’s foot or two of firewood, or 
knock to pieces an old barrel, or split up a pine board 
for kindling-stuff ; in summer, to dig the few yards of 
garden ground appertaining to a low-rented tenement, 
and share the produce of his labor at the halves; in win- 
ter, to shovel away the snow from the sidewalk, or open 
paths to the woodshed, or along the clothes-line; such 
were some of the essential offices which Uncle Venner 
performed among at least a score of families. Within 
that circle, he claimed the same sort of privilege, and 
probably felt as much warmth of interest, as a clergy 
- man does in the range of his parishioners. Not that 
he laid claim to the tithe pig; but, as an analogous 
mode of reverence, he went his rounds, every morning. 
to gather up the crumbs of the table and overflowings 
of the dinner-pot, as food for a pig of his own. 

In his younger days — for, after all, there was a 
dim tradition that he had been, not young, but 


VOL. III. 6 


82 tHE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


younger — Uncle Venner was commonly regarded ag 
rather deficient, than otherwise, in his wits. In truth 
he had virtually pleaded guilty to the charge, by 
scarcely aiming at such success as other men seek, and 
by taking only that humble and modest part in the 
intercourse of life which belongs to the alleged defi- 
ciency. But now, in his extreme old age, — whether 
it were that his long and hard experience had actually 
brightened him, or that his decaying judgment ren- 
dered him less capable of fairly measuring himself, —~ 
the venerable man made pretensions to no little wis- 
dom, and really enjoyed the credit of it. There was 
likewise, at times, a vein of something like poetry in 
him ; it was the moss or wall-flower of his mind in its 
small dilapidation, and gave a charm to what might 
have been vulgar and commonplace in his earlier and 
middle life. Hepzibah had a regard for him, because 
his name was ancient in the town and had formerly 
been respectable. It was a still better reason for 
awarding him a species of familiar reverence that Un- 
cle Venner was himself the most ancient existence, 
whether of man or thing, in Pyncheon Street, except 
the House of the Seven Gables, and perhaps the elm 
that overshadowed it. 

This patriarch now presented himself before Hepzi- 
bah, clad in an old blue coat, which had a fashionable 
air, and must have accrued to him from the cast-off 
wardrobe of some dashing clerk. As for his trousers, 
they were of tow-cloth, very short in the legs, and bag 
ging down strangely in the rear, but yet having a suit. 
ableness to his figure which his other garment entirely 
lacked. His hat had relation to no other part of his 
dress, and but very little to the head that wore it. 
Yous Uncle Venner was a miscellaneous old gentle 


A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER. 83 


man, partly himself, but, in good measure, somebody 
else; patched together, too, of different epochs; an 
epitome of times and fashions. 

‘*So, you have really begun trade,” said he, — 
“really begun trade! Well, I’m glad to see it. 
Young people should never live idle in the world, nor 
old ones neither, unless when the rheumatize gets hold 
of them. It has given me warning already; and in 
two or three years longer, I shall think of putting 
aside business and retiring to my farm. That’s yon- 
der, — the great brick house, you know, — the work- 
house, most folks call it; but I mean to do my work 
first, and go there to be idle and enjoy myself. And 
I’m glad to see you beginning to do your work, Miss 
Hepzibah ! ” 

“Thank you, Uncle Venner,” said Hepzibah, smil- 
ing ; for she always felt kindly towards the simple 
and talkative old man. Had he been an old woman, 
she might probably have repelled the freedom, which 
she now took in good part. “It is time for me to 
begin work, indeed! Or, to speak the truth, I have 
just begun when I ought to be giving it up.” 

* Oh, never say that, Miss Hepzibah!” answered 
the old man. ‘“ You are a young woman yet. Why, 
I hardly thought myself younger than I am now, it 
seems so little while ago since I used to see you play- 
ing about the door of the old house, quite a small 
child! Oftener, though, you used to be sitting at the 
threshold, and looking gravely into the street; for you 
had always a grave kind of way with you, — a grown- 
up air, when you were only the height of my knee. 
It seems as if I saw you now; and your grandfather 
with his red cloak, and his white wig, and his cocked 
hat, and his cane, coming out of the house, and step- 


84 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


ping so grandly up the street! Those old gentlemes 
that grew up before the Revolution used to put on 
grand airs. In my young days, the great man of the 
town was commonly called King; and his wife, not 
Queen to be sure, but Lady. Nowadays, a man would 
not dare to be called King; and if he feels himself a 
little above common folks, he only stoops so much the 
lower to them. I met your cousin, the Judge, ten 
minutes ago; and, in my old tow-cloth trousers, as 
you see, the Judge raised his hat to me, I do believe! 
At any rate, the Judge bowed and smiled!” 

“Yes,” said Hepzibah, with something bitter steal- 
ing unawares into her tone; “my cousin Jaffrey is 
thought to have a very pleasant smile !” 

“And so he has!” replied Uncle Venner. ‘“ And 
that ’s rather remarkable in a Pyncheon ; for, begging 
your pardon, Miss Hepzibah, they never had the name 
of being an easy and agreeable set of folks. There 
was no getting close to them. But now, Miss Hepzi- 
bah, if an old man may be bold to ask, why don’t 
Judge Pyncheon, with his great means, step forward, 
and tell his cousin to shut up her little shop at once? 
It’s for your credit to be doing something, but it’s 
not for the Judge’s credit to let you!” 

“We won’t talk of this, if you please, Uncle Ven- 
ner,” said Hepzibah, coldly. “I ought to say, how- 
ever, that, if I choose to earn bread for myself, it is 
not Judge Pyncheon’s fault. Neither will he deserve 
the blame,”’ added she, more kindly, remembering Un- 
ele Venner’s privileges of age and humble familiarity, 
“if I should, by and by, find it convenient to retire 
with you to your farm.” 

‘“‘ And it’s no bad place, either, that farm of mine!” 
sried the old man, cheerily, as if there were something 


A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER. 85 


positively delightful in the prospect. ‘No bad place 
is the great brick farm-house, especially for them that 
will find a good many old cronies there, as will be my 
ease. I quite long to be among them, sometimes, of 
the winter evenings; for it is but dull business for a 
lonesome elderly man, like me, to be nodding, by the 
hour together, with no company but his air-tight stove. 
Summer or winter, there’s a great deal to be said in 
favor of my farm! And, take it in the autumn, what 
can be pleasanter than to spend a whole day on the 
sunny side of a barn or a wood-pile, chatting with 
somebody as old as one’s self; or, perhaps, idling 
away the time with a natural-born simpleton, who 
knows how to be idle, because even our busy Yankees 
never have found out how to put him to any use? 
Upon my word, Miss Hepzibah, I doubt whether I ’ve 
ever been so comfortable as I mean to be at my farm, 
which most folks call the workhouse. But you, — 
you ’re a young woman yet, — you never need go 
there! Something still better will turn up for you. 
I’m sure of it!” 

Hepzibah fancied that there was something peculiar 
in her venerable friend’s look and tone; insomuch, 
that she gazed into his face with considerable earnest- 
ness, endeavoring to discover what secret meaning, if 
any, might be lurking there. Individuals whose af- 
fairs have reached an utterly desperate crisis almost 
invariably keep themselves alive with hopes, so much 
the more airily magnificent as they have the less of 
solid matter within their grasp whereof to mould any 
judicious and moderate expectation of good. Thus, 
all the while Hepzibah was perfecting the scheme of 
her little shop, she had cherished an unacknowledged 
‘dea that some harlequin trick of fortune would im 


86 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES, 


tervene in her favor. For example, an uncle — whe 
had sailed for India fifty years before, and never 
been heard of since — might yet return, and adopt 
her to be the comfort of his very extreme and decrepit 
age, and adorn her with pearls, diamonds, and Orien- 
tal shawls and turbans, and make her the ultimate 
heiress of his unreckonable riches. Or the member 
of Parliament, now at the head of the English branch 
of the family,— with which the elder stock, on this 
side of the Atlantic, had held little or no intercourse 
for the last two centuries, —this eminent gentleman 
might invite Hepzibah to quit the ruinous House of 
the Seven Gables, and come over to dwell with her 
kindred at Pyncheon Hall. But, for reasons the most 
imperative, she could not yield to his request. It was 
more probable, therefore, that the descendants of a 
Pyncheon who had emigrated to Virginia, in some 
past generation, and became a great planter there, — 
hearing of Hepzibah’s destitution, and impelled by the 
splendid generosity of character with which their Vir- 
ginian mixture must have enriched the New England 
blood, — would send her a remittance of a thousand 
dollars, with a hint of repeating the favor annually. 
Or, — and, surely, anything so undeniably just could 
not be beyond the limits of reasonable anticipation, 
—the great claim to the heritage of Waldo County 
might finally be decided in favor of the Pyncheons ; 
so that, instead of keeping a cent-shop, Hepzibah 
would build a palace, and look down from its highest 
tower on hill, dale, forest, field, and town, as her own 
share of the ancestral territory. 

These were some of the fantasies which she had long 
dreamed about; and, aided by these, Uncle Venner’s 
casual attempt at encouragement kindled a strange 


A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER. 87 


festal glory in the poor, bare, melancholy chambers of 
her brain, as if that inner world were suddenly lighted 
up with gas. But either he knew nothing of her cas- 
tles in the air —as how should he? — or else her 
earnest scowl disturbed his recollection, as it might 
@ more courageous man’s. Instead of pursuing any 
weightier topic, Uncle Venner was pleased to favor 
flepzibah with some sage counsel in her shop-keeping 
eapacity. 

‘Give no credit! ’”” — these were some of his golden 
maxims, — “‘ Never take paper-money! Look well to 
your change! Ring the silver on the four-pound 
weight! Shove back all English half-pence and base 
copper tokens, such as are very plenty about town! 
At your leisure hours, knit children’s woollen socks 
and mittens! Brew your own yeast, and make your 
own ginger-beer !” 

And while Hepzibah was doing her utmost to digest 
the hard little pellets of his already uttered wisdom, 
he gave vent to his final, and what he declared to be 
his all-important advice, as follows : — 

*¢ Put on a bright face for your customers, and smile 
pleasantly as you hand them what they ask for! A 
stale article, if you dip it in a good, warm, sunny smile, 
will go off better than a fresh one that you ’ve scowled 
upon.” 

To this last apothegm poor Hepzibah responded with 
a sigh so deep and heavy that it almost rustled Uncle 
Venner quite away, like a withered leaf, — as he was, 
--- before an autumnal gale. Recovering himself, how- 
ever, he bent forward, and, with a good deal of feeling 
in his ancient visage, beckoned her nearer to him. 

_ * When do you expect him home ?” whispered he. 

“Whom do you mean?” asked Hepzibah, turning 
pale. 


88 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


“ Ah? you don’t love to talk about it,” said Uncle 
Venner. ‘ Well, well! we ll say no more, though 
there ’s word of it all over town. I remember him, 
Miss Hepzibah, before he could run alone!” 

During the remainder of the day poor Hepzibah ac. 
yuitted herself even less creditably, as a shop-keeper, 
than in her earlier efforts. She appeared to be walk- 
ing in a dream; or, more truly, the vivid life and real- 
ity assumed by her emotions made all outward occur. 
rences unsubstantial, like the teasing phantasms of a 
half-conscious slumber. She still responded, mechan- 
ically, to the frequent summons of the shop-bell, and, 
at the demand of her customers, went prying with 
vague eyes about the shop, proffering them one article 
after another, and thrusting aside — perversely, as 
most of them supposed — the identical thing they 
asked for. ‘There is sad confusion, indeed, when the 
spirit thus flits away into the past, or into the more 
awful future, or, in any manner, steps across the space- 
less boundary betwixt its own region and the actual 
world ; where the body remains to guide itself as best 
it may, with little more than the mechanism of animal 
iife. It is like death, without death’s quiet privilege, 
—its freedom from mortal care. Worst of all, when 
the actual duties are comprised in such petty details 
as now vexed the brooding soul of the old gentle- 
woman. As the animosity of fate would have it, there 
was a great influx of custom in the course of the after- 
noon. Hepzibah blundered to and fro about her 
small place of business, committing the most unheard- 
of errors: now stringing up twelve, and now seven, 
tallow-candles, instead of ten to the pound; selling 
ginger for Scotch snuff, pins for needles, and needles 
for pins; misreckoning her change, sometimes to the 


A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER. 89 


public detriment, and much oftener to her own; and 
thus she went on, doing her utmost to bring chaos back 
again, until, at the close of the day’s labor, to her in- 
explicable astonishment, she found the money-drawer 
almost destitute of coin. After all her painful traffic, 
the whole proceeds were perhaps half a dozen coppers, 
and a questionable ninepence which ultimately proved 
to be copper likewise. 

At this price, or at whatever price, she rejoiced that 
the day had reached its end. Never before had she 
had such a sense of the intolerable length of time that 
creeps between dawn and sunset, and of the miserable 
irksomeness of having aught to do, and of the better 
wisdom that it would be to lie down at once, in sullen 
resignation, and let life, and its toils and vexations. 
trample over one’s prostrate body as they may! Hep- 
zibah’s final operation was with the little devourer of 
Jim Crow and the elephant, who now proposed to eat 
a camel. In her bewilderment, she offered him first 
a wooden dragoon, and next a handful of marbles; 
neither of which being adapted to his else omnivorous 
appetite, she hastily held out her whole remaining 
stock of natural history in gingerbread, and huddled 
the small customer out of the shop. She then muffled 
the bell in an unfinished stocking, and put up the 
oaken bar across the door. 

During the latter process, an omnibus came to a 
stand-still under the branches of the elm-tree. Hep- 
zibah’s heart was in her mouth. Remote and dusky, 
and with no sunshine on all the intervening space, was 
that region of the Past whence her only guest might 
be expected to arrive! Was she to meet him now? 

Somebody, at all events, was passing from the 
farthest interior of the omnibus towards its entrance. 


90 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


A gentleman alighted; but it was only to offer his 
hand to a young girl whose slender figure, nowise 
needing such assistance, now lightly descended the 
steps, and made an airy little jump from the final one 
to the sidewalk. She rewarded her cavalier with a 
smile, the cheery glow of which was seen reflected on 
his own face as he reéntered the wehicle. The girl 
then turned towards the House of the Seven Gables, 
to the door of which, meanwhile, — not the shop-door, 
but the antique portal, — the omnibus-man had car- 
ried a light trunk and a bandbox. First giving a 
sharp rap of the old iron knocker, he /eft his pas- 
senger and her luggage at the door-step, and departed. 

“Who can it be?” thought Hepzibah, who had 
been screwing her visual organs into the acutest focus 
of which they were capable. “The girl must have 
mistaken the house !”’ 

She stole softly into the hall, and, herself invisible, 
gazed through the dusty side-lights of the portal at 
the young, blooming, and very cheerful face, which 
presented itself for admittance into the gloomy old 
mansion. It was a face to which almost any door 
would have opened of its own accord. 

The young girl, so fresh, so unconventional, and yet 
so orderly and obedient to common rules, as you at 
once recognized her to be, was widely in contrast, at 
that moment, with everything about her. The sordid 
and ugly luxuriance of gigantic weeds that grew in the 
angle of the house, and the heavy projection that over- 
shadowed her, and the time-worn framework of the 
door, — none of these things belonged to her sphere. 
But, even as a ray of sunshine, fall into what dismal 
place it may, instantaneously creates for itself a pro- 
priety in being there, so did it seem altogether fit that 






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A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER. o1 


the girl should be standing at the threshold. It was 
no less evidently proper that the door should swing 
open to admit her. The maiden lady, herself, sternly 
inhospitable in her first purposes, soon began to feel 
that the door ought to be shoved back, and the rusty 
key be turned in the reluctant lock. 

“Can it be Phebe?” questioned she within herself. 
‘6 Tt must be little Phcebe; for it can be nobody else, 
—and there is a look of her father about her, too! 
But what does she want here? And how like a coun- 
try cousin, to come down upon a poor body in this 
way, without so much as a day’s notice, or asking 
whether she would be welcome! Well; she must 
have a night’s lodging, I suppose ; and to-morrow the 
child shall go back to her mother! ” 

Pheebe, it must be understood, was that one little 
offshoot of the Pyncheon race to whom we have al- 
ready referred, as a native of a rural part of New 
England, where the old fashions and feelings of rela- 
tionship are still partially kept up. In her own circle, 
it was regarded as by no means improper for kinsfolk 
to visit one another without invitation, or preliminary 
and ceremonious warning. Yet, in consideration of 
Miss Hepzibah’s recluse way of life, a letter had actu- 
ally been written and despatched, conveying informa- 
tion of Phebe’s projected visit. This epistle, for three 
or four days past, had been in the pocket of the penny- 
postman, who, happening to have no other business in 
Pyncheon Street, had not yet made it convenient te 
zall at the House of the Seven Gables. 

“« No! — she can stay only one night,” said Hepzi- 
bah, unbolting the door. “If Clifford were to fir’ 
her here, it might disturb him!” 


V. 
MAY AND NOVEMBER. 


Puase PyncHeon slept, on the night of hei az. 
cival, in a chamber that looked down on the garden of 
the old house. It fronted towards the east, so that at 
a very seasonable hour a glow of crimson light came 
flooding through the window, and bathed the dingy 
ceiling and paper-hangings in its own hue. There 
were curtains to Phcebe’s bed; a dark, antique can- 
opy, and ponderous festoons of a stuff which had been 
rich, and even magnificent, in its time; but which now 
brooded over the girl like a cloud, making a night in 
that one corner, while elsewhere it was beginning to 
be day. The morning light, however, soon stole into 
the aperture at the foot of the bed, betwixt those faded 
curtains. Finding the new guest there, — with a bloom 
on her cheeks like the morning’s own, and a gentle 
stir of departing slumber in her limbs, as when an 
early breeze moves the foliage, — the dawn kissed her 
brow. It was the caress which a dewy maiden — such 
as the Dawn is, immortally — gives to her sleeping 
sister, partly from the impulse of irresistible fond- 
ness, and partly as a pretty hint that it is time now 
to unclose her eyes. 

At the touch of those lips of light, Pheebe quietly 
awoke, and, for a moment, did not recognize where 
she was, nor how those heavy curtains chanced to be 
festooned around her. Nothing, indeed, was abso« 


MAY AND NOVEMBER. 93 


lutely plain to her, except that it was now early morn- 
ing, and that, whatever might happen next, it was 
proper, first of all, to get up and say her prayers. She 
was the more inclined to devotion from the grim as- 
pect of the chamber and its furniture, especially the 
tall, stiff chairs; one of which stood close by her bed- 
aide, and looked as if some old-fashioned personage 
had been sitting there all night, and had vanished only 
just in season to escape discovery. 

When Phebe was quite dressed, she peeped out of 
the window, and saw a rose-bush in the garden. Be- 
ing a very tall one, and of luxuriant growth, it had 
been propped up against the side of the house, and 
was literally covered with a rare and very beautiful 
species of white rose. A large portion of them, as the 
girl afterwards discovered, had blight or mildew at 
their hearts ; but, viewed at a fair distance, the whole 
rose-bush looked as if it had been brought from Eden 
that very summer, together with the mould in which it 
grew. The truth was, nevertheless, that it had been 
planted by Alice Pyncheon, — she was Pheebe’s great- 
great-grand-aunt, — in soil which, reckoning only its 
cultivation as a garden-plat, was now unctuous with 
nearly two hundred years of vegetable decay. Grow- 
ing as they did, however, out of the old earth, the 
flowers still sent a fresh and sweet incense up to their 
Creator; nor could it have been the less pure and ac- 
ceptable, because Phcebe’s young breath mingled with 
it, as the fragrance floated past the window. Hasten- 
ing down the creaking and carpetless staircase, she 
found her way into the garden, gathered some of the 
most perfect of the roses, and brought them to her 
chamber. 

Little Phoebe was one of those persons who possess, 


94 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


as their exclusive patrimony, the gift of practical an 
rangement. It is a kind of natural magic that enablea 
these ‘favored ones to bring out the hidden capabilities 
of things around them; and particularly to give a 
look of comfort and habitableness to any place which, 
for however brief a period, may happen to be thei 
home. A wild hut of underbrush, tossed together by 
wayfarers through the primitive forest, would acquire 
the home aspect by one night’s lodging of such a 
woman, and would retain it long after her quiet fig- 
ure had disappeared into the surrounding shade. No 
less a portion of such homely witchcraft was requisite 
to reclaim, as it were, Phoebe’s waste, cheerless, and 
dusky chamber, which had been untenanted so long — 
except by spiders, and mice, and rats, and ghosts — 
that it was all overgrown with the desolation which 
watches to obliterate every trace of man’s happier 
hours. What was precisely Phoebe’s process we find 
it impossible to say. She appeared to have no pre- 
liminary design, but gave a touch here and another 
there; brought some articles of furniture to light and 
dragged others into the shadow; looped up or let 
down a window-curtain ; and, in the course of half an 
hour, had fully succeeded in throwing a kindly and 
hospitable smile over the apartment. No longer ago 
than the night before, it had resembled nothing so 
much as the old maid’s heart; for there was neither 
sunshine nor household fire in one nor the other, and, 
save for ghosts and ghostly reminiscences, not a guest, 
for many years gone by, had entered the heart or the 
chamber. 

There was still another peculiarity of this inscrut 
able charm. The bedchamber, no doubt, was a cham- 
ber of very great and varied experience, as a scene of 


MAY AND NOVEMBER. 94 


human life: the joy of bridal nights had throbbed it. 
self away here; new immortals had first drawn earthly 
breath here; and here old people had died. But — 
whether it were the white roses, or whatever the sub- 
tile influence might be —a person of delicate instinct 
would have known at once that it was now a maiden’s 
bedchamber, and had been purified of all former evil 
and sorrow by her sweet breath and happy thoughts, 
Her dreams of the past night, being such cheerful 
ones, had exorcised the gloom, and now haunted the 
chamber in its stead. : 

After arranging matters to her satisfaction, Phoebe 
emerged from her chamber, with a purpose to descend 
again into the garden. Besides the rose-bush, she had 
observed several other species of flowers growing there 
in a wilderness of neglect, and obstructing one an- 
other’s development (as is often the pacael case in 
human society) by their uneducated entanglement 
and confusion. At the head of the stairs, however, 
she met Hepzibah, who, it being still early, invited her 
into a room which she would probably have called her 
boudoir, had her education embraced any such French 
phrase. It was strewn about with a few old books, 
and a work-basket, and a dusty writing-desk ; and had, 
on one side, a large, black article of furniture, of very 
strange appearance, which the old gentlewoman told 
Phoebe was a harpsichord. It looked more like a 
coffin than anything else; and, indeed, — net having 
been played upon, or opened, for years, — there must 
have been a vast deal of dead music in it, stifled for 
want of air. Human finger was hardly known to have 
touched its chords since the days of Alice Pyncheon, 
who had learned the sweet accomplishment of melody 
in Europe. 


96 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


Hepzibah bade her young guest sit down, and, her- 
self taking a chair near by, looked as earnestly at 
Phebe’s trim little figure as if she expected to see 
right into its springs and motive secrets. 

“Cousin Phebe,” said she, at last, “I really can't 

jee my way clear to keep you with me.” 
_ These words, however, had not the inhospitable 
bluntness with which they may strike the reader; fox 
the two relatives, in a talk before bedtime, had arrived 
at a certain degree of mutual understanding. Hepzi- 
bah knew enough to enable her to appreciate the cir- 
cumstances (resulting from the second marriage of the 
girl’s mother) which made it desirable for Phebe to 
establish herself in another home. Nor did she misin- 
terpret Phoebe’s character, and the genial activity per- 
vading it, — one of the most valuable traits of the 
true New England woman, — which had impelled her 
forth, as might be said, to seek her fortune, but with 
a self-respecting purpose to confer as much benefit as 
she could anywise receive. As one of her nearest 
kindred, she had naturally betaken herself to Hepzi- 
bah, with no idea of forcing herself on her cousin’s 
protection, but only for a visit of a week or two, which 
might be indefinitely extended, shculd it prove for the 
happiness of both. | 

To Hepzibah’s blunt observation, therefore, Phoebe 
replied, as frankly, and more cheerfully. 

‘Dear cousin, I cannot tell how it will be,” said 
she. ‘ But I really think we may suit one another 
much better than you suppose.” 

“You are a nice girl, — I see it plainly,” continued 
Hepzibah; “and it is not any question as to that 
point which makes me hesitate. But, Phebe, this 
house of mine is but a melancholy place for a young 


MAY AND NOVEMBER. 97 


person to be in. It lets in the wind and rain, and the 
snow, too, in the garret and upper chambers, in winter- 
time, but it never lets in the sunshine! And as for 
myself, you see what I am, —a dismal and lonesome 
old woman (for I begin to call myself old, Phebe), 
whose temper, I am afraid, is none of the best, and 
whose spirits are as bad as can be. I cannot make 
your life pleasant, Cousin Phebe, neither can I so 
much as give you bread to eat.” 

* You will find me a cheerful little body,” answered 
Phebe, smiling, and yet with a kind of gentle dig- 
nity; “and I mean to earn my bread. You know I 
have not been brought up a Pyncheon. A girl learns 
many things in a New England village.” 

* Ah! Phebe,” said Hepzibah, sighing, “ your 

knowledge would do but little for you here! And then 
it is a wretched thought that you should fling away 
your young days in a place like this. Those cheeks 
would not be so rosy after a month or two. Look at 
ny face!” —and, indeed, the contrast was very strik- 
ing, — “you see how pale lam! It is my idea that 
the dust and continual decay of these old houses are 
unwholesome for the lungs.” 

‘There is the garden, — the flowers to be taken care 
of,” observed Phebe. “I should keep myself healthy 
with exercise in the open air.” 

‘And, after all, child,” exclaimed Hepzibah, sud- 
denly rising, as if to dismiss the subject, “it is not 
for me to say who shall be a guest or inhabitant of 
the old Pyncheon House. Its master is coming.” 

“Do you mean Judge Pyncheon?” asked Pheebe, 
in surprise. 

“Judge Pyncheon!” answered her cousin, angrily. 
* He will hardly cross the threshold while I live! Na, 


VOL. III. 7 


88 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


no! But, Phebe, you shall see the face of him I speak 
of.” 

She went in quest of the miniature already de- 
scribed, and returned with it in her hand. Giving it 
to Phebe, she watched her features narrowly, and 
with a certain jealousy as to the mode in which the 
girl would show herself affected by the picture. 

“‘ How do you like the face?”’ asked Hepzibah. 

“Tt is handsome ! —- it is very beautiful!” said 
Phebe, admiringly. “It is as sweet a face as a man’s 
can be, or ought to be. It has something of a child’s 
expression, — and yet not childish,— only one feels 
so very kindly towards him! He ought never to suf- 
fer anything. One would bear much for the sake of 
sparing him toil or sorrow. Who is it, Cousin Hep- 
zibah ?”’ 

“Did you never hear,’ whispered her cousin, bend- 
ing towards her, “ of Clifford Pyncheon ?” 

“Never! I thought there were no Pyncheons left, 
except yourself and our cousin Jaffrey,” answered 
Phebe. “And yet I seem to have heard the name 
of Clifford Pyncheon. Yes!—from my father or my 
mother ; but has he not been a long while dead?” 

“¢ Well, well, child, perhaps he has!” said Hepzibah, 
with a sad, hollow laugh ; “ but, in old houses like this, 
you know, dead people are very apt to come back 
again! We shall see. And, Cousin Phebe, since, 
after all that I have said, your courage does not fail 
you, we will not part so soon. You are welcome, my 
child, for the present, to such a home as your kins- 
woman can offer you.” 

With this measured, but not exactly cold assurance 
4f a hospitable purpose, Hepzibah kissed her cheek. 

They now went below stairs, where Phoeebe— not se 


MAY AND NOVEMBER. 99 


much assuming the office as attracting it to herself, by 
the magnetism of innate fitness —took the most ac- 
tive part in preparing breakfast. The mistress of the 
house, meanwhile, as is usual with persons of her 
stiff and unmalleable cast, stood mostly aside; willing 
to lend her aid, yet conscious that her natural inapti- 
tude would be likely to impede the business in hand. 
Pheebe, and the fire that boiled the teakettle, were 
equally bright, cheerful, and efficient, in their respect- 
ive offices. Hepzibah gazed forth from her habitual 
sluggishness, the necessary result of long solitude, as 
from another sphere. She could not help being in- 
terested, however, and even amused, at the readiness 
with which her new inmate adapted herself to the cir- 
cumstances, and brought the house, moreover, and all 
its rusty old appliances, into a suitableness for her 
purposes. Whatever she did, too, was done without 
conscious effort, and with frequent outbreaks of song, 
which were exceedingly pleasant to the ear. This 
natural tunefulness made Phebe seem like a bird in a 
shadowy tree; or conveyed the idea that the stream of 
life warbled through her heart as a brook sometimes 
warbles through a pleasant little dell. It betokened 
the cheeriness of an active temperament, finding joy 
in its activity, and, therefore, rendering it beautiful ; 
it was a New England trait, —the stern old stuff of 
Puritanism with a gold thread in the web. 

Hepzibah brought out some old silver spoons with 
the family crest upon them, and a china tea-set painted 
over with grotesque figures of man, bird, and beast, 
in as grotesque a landscape. These pictured people 
were odd humorists, in a world of their own, —a 
world of vivid brilliancy, so far as color went, and 
still unfaded, although the teapot and small cups were 
gs aneient as the custom itself of tea-drinking. 


100 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


“Your great-great-great-great-grandmother had these 
cups, when she was married,” said Hepzibah to Phebe. 
“‘She was a Davenport, of a good family. They were 
almost the first teacups ever seen in the colony; and if 
one of them were to be broken, my heart would break 
with it. But it is nonsense to speak so about a brittle 
teacup, when I remember what my heart has gone 
through without breaking.” 

The cups— not having been used, perhaps, since 
Hepzibah’s youth —had contracted no small burden 
of dust, which Phcebe washed away with so much care 
and delicacy as to satisfy even the proprietor of this 
invaluable china. 

“‘ What a nice little housewife you are!” exclaimed 
the latter, smiling, and, at the same time, frowning so 
prodigiously that the smile was sunshine under a thun- 
der-cloud. ‘Do you do other things as well? Are 
you as good at your book as you are at washing tea 
cups?” 

“ Not quite, I am afraid,” said Pheebe, laughing at 
the form of Hepzibah’s question. ‘ But I was school- 
mistress for the little children in our district last sum- 
mer, and might have been so still.” 

“Ah! ’t is all very well!” observed the maiden 
lady, drawing herself up. ‘“ But these things must 
have come to you with your mother’s blood. . aever 
knew a Pyncheon that had any turn for them.” 

It is very queer, but not the less true, that people 
are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their 
deficiencies than of their available gifts; as was Hep. 
zibah of this native inapplicability, so to speak, of the 
Pyncheons to any useful purpose. She regarded it as 
an hereditary trait; and so, perhaps, it was, but, un- 
fortunately, a morbid one, such as is often generated 


MAY AND NOVEMBER. 102 


in families that remain long above the surface of so 
ciety. 

Before they left the breakfast-table, the shop-bell 
rang sharply, and Hepzibah set down the remnant of 
her final cup of tea, with a look of sallow despair that 
was truly piteous to behold. In cases of distasteful 
occupation, the second day is generally worse than the 
first; we return to the rack with all the soreness of 
the preceding torture in our limbs. At all events, 
Hepzibah had fully satisfied herself of the impossibil. 
ity of ever becoming wonted to this peevishly obstrep- 
erous little bell. Ring as often as it might, the 
sound always smote upon her nervous system rudely 
and suddenly. And especially now, while, with her 
crested teaspoons and antique china, she was flattering 
herself with ideas of gentility, she felt an unspeakable 
disinclination to confront a eustomer. 

* Do not trouble yourself, dear cousin!” cried Phebe, 
starting lightly up. ‘ I am shop-keeper to-day.” 

* You, child!” exclaimed Hepzibah. ‘“ What can 
a little country-girl know of such matters? ” 

“Oh, I have done all the shopping for the family 
at our village store,” said Phebe. ‘ And I have had 
a table at a fancy fair, and made better sales than 
anybody. ‘These things are not to be learnt; they 
depend upon a knack that comes, I suppose,” added 
she, smiling, “ with one’s mother’s blood. You shall 
see that I am as nice a little saleswoman as I am a 
housewife ! ” 

The old gentlewoman stole behind Phebe, and peeped 
from the passage-way into the shop, to note how she 
would manage her undertaking. It was a case of 
some intricacy. A very ancient woman, in a white 
short gown and a green petticoat, with a string of gold 


102 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


beads about her neck, and what looked like a nighteap 
on her head, had brought a quantity of yarn to barter 
for the commodities of the shop. She was probably 
the very last person in town who still kept the time- 
honored spinning- wheel in constant revolution. It 
was worth while to hear the croaking and hollow tones 
of the old lady, and the pleasant voice of Phebe, 
mingling in one twisted thread of talk; and still bet- 
ter to contrast their figures, —so light and bloomy, 
—so decrepit and dusky, — with only the counter 
betwixt them, in one sense, but more than threescore 
years, in another. As for the bargain, it was wrinkled 
slyness and craft pitted against native truth and sa- 
gacity. 

“Was not that well done?” asked Pheebe, iaugh- 
ing, when the customer was gone. 

‘Nicely done, indeed, child!” answered Hepzibah. 
“T could not have gone through with it nearly so well. 
As you say, it must be a knack that belongs to you on 
the mother’s side.” 

It is a very genuine admiration, that with which © 
persons too shy or too awkward to take a due part in 
the bustling world regard the real actors in life’s stir- 
ring scenes ; so genuine, in fact, that the former are 
usually fain to make it palatable to their self-love, by 
assuming that these active and forcible qualities are 
incompatible with others, which they choose to deem 
higher and more important. Thus, Hepzibah was well 
content to acknowledge Phcebe’s vastly superior gifts 
as a shop-keeper; she listened, with compliant ear, to 
her suggestion of various methods whereby the influx 
of trade might be increased, and rendered profitable, 
without a hazardous outlay of capital. She consented 
that the village maiden should manufacture yeast, both 


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By Ailes 


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MAY AND NOVEMBER. 103 


fiquid and in cakes; and should brew a certain kind 
of beer, nectareous to the palate, and of rare stomachic 
virtues ; and, moreover, should bake and exhibit fox 
sale some little spice-cakes, which whosoever tasted 
would longingly desire to taste again. All such proofs 
of a ready mind and skilful handiwork were highly 
acceptable to the aristocratic hucksteress, so long as 
she could murmur to herself with a grim smile, and a 
half-natural sigh, and a sentiment of mixed wonder, 
pity, and growing affection, — 

“‘ What a nice little body she is! If she could only 
be a lady, too! —but that’s impossible! Phebe is 
no Pyncheon. She takes everything from her mother.” 

As to Pheebe’s not being a lady, or whether she 
were a lady or no, it was a point, perhaps, difficult to 
decide, but which could hardly have come up for judg- 
ment at all in any fair and healthy mind. Out of New 
England, it would be impossible to meet with a person 
combining so many lady-like attributes with so many 
others that form no necessary (if compatible) part of 
the character. She shocked no canon of taste; she 
was admirably in keeping with herself, and never 
jarred against surrounding circumstances. Her figure, 
to be sure, — so small as to be almost childlike, and 
so elastic that motion seemed as easy or easier to it 
than rest, — would hardly have suited one’s idea of a 
countess. Neither did her face — with the brown 
ringlets on either side, and the slightly piquant nose, 
and the wholesome bloom, and the clear shade of tan, 
and the half a dozen freckles, friendly remembrancers 
of the April sun and breeze —precisely give us a 
right to call her beautiful. But there was both lustre 
and depth in her eyes. She was very pretty; as grace- 
ful as a bird, and graceful much in the same way ; ag 


104 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


pleasant about the house as a gleam of sunshine falk 
ing on the floor through a shadow of twinkling leaves, 
or as aray of firelight that dances on the wall while 
evening is drawing nigh. Instead of discussing her 
claim to rank among ladies, it would be preferable to 
regard Phoebe as the example of feminine grace and 
availability combined, in a state of society, if there 
were any such, where ladies did not exist. There it 
should be woman’s office to move in the midst of prac- 
tical affairs, and to gild them all, the very homeliest, 
—were it even the scouring of pots and kettles,— 
with an atmosphere of loveliness and joy. 

Such was the sphere of Phcebe. To find the born 
and educated lady, on the other hand, we need look 
no farther than Hepzibah, our forlorn old maid, in her 
rustling and rusty silks, with her deeply cherished and 
ridiculous_consciousness of long descent, her shadowy 

“dlaims to princely territory, and, in the way of accom: 
plishment, her recollections, it may be, of having for- 
merly thrummed on a harpsichord, and walked a min- 
uet, and worked an antique tapestry-stitch on her sam- 
pler. It was a fair parallel between new Plebeianism_ 

It really seemed as if the battered visage of the 
House of the Seven Gables, black and heavy-browed 
as it still certainly looked, must have shown a kind of 
cheerfulness glimmering through its dusky windows 
as Phebe passed to and fro in the interior. Other. 
wise, it is impossible to explain how the people of the 
neighborhood so soon became aware of the girl’s pres- 
ence. There was a great run of custom, setting stead- 
ily in, from about ten o’clock until towards noon, — 
relaxing, somewhat, at dinner-time, but recommencing 
in the afternoon, and, finally, dying away a half am 


MAY AND NOVEMBER. 105 


hour or so before the long day’s sunset. One of the 
stanchest patrons was little Ned Higgins, the devourer 
of Jim Crow and the elephant, who to-day had signal. 
ized his omnivorous prowess by swallowing two drom- 
edaries and a locomotive. Phoebe laughed, as she 
summed up her aggregate of sales upon the slate; 
while Hepzibah, first drawing on a pair of silk gloves, 
reckoned over the sordid accumulation of copper coin, 
not without silver intermixed, that had jingled into 
the till. 

“We must renew our stock, Cousin Hepzibah!” 
cried the little saleswoman. ‘The gingerbread figures 
are all gone, and so are those Dutch wooden milk- 
maids, and most of our other playthings. There has 
been constant inquiry for cheap raisins, and a great 
ery for whistles, and trumpets, and jew’s-harps; and 
at least a dozen little boys have asked for molasses- 
candy. And we must contrive to get a peck of russet 
apples, late in the season as it is. But, dear cousin, 
what an enormous heap of copper! Positively a cop. 
per mountain!” 

“Well done! well done! well done!” quoth Uncle 
Venner, who had taken occasion to shuffle in and out 
of the shop several times in the course of the day, 
“ Here’s a girl that will never end her days at my 
farm! Bless my eyes, what a brisk little soul!” 

“* Yes, Phebe is a nice girl!” said Hepzibah, with a 
scowl of austere approbation. ‘ But, Uncle Venner, 
you have known the family a great many years. Can 
you tell me whether there ever was a Pyncheon whom 
she takes after?” 

“I don’t believe there ever was,” answered the ven- 
erable man. ‘“ At any rate, it never was my luck 
to see her like among them, nor, for that matter, any- 


106 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


where else. I’ve seen a great deal of the world, not 
only in people’s kitchens and back-yards, but at the 
street-corners, and on the wharves, and in other places 
where my business calls me; and I’m free to say, 
Miss Hepzibah, that I never knew a human creature 
do her work so much like one of God’s angels as this 
child Phoebe does!” 

Uncle Venner’s eulogium, if it appear rather toc 
high-strained for the person and occasion, had, never. 
theless, a sense in which it was both subtile and true. 
There was a spiritual quality in Phebe’s activity. 
The life of the long and busy day — spent in occupa- 
tions that might so easily have taken a squalid and 
ugly aspect — had been made pleasant, and even love- 
ly, by the spontaneous grace with which these homely 
duties seemed to bloom out of her character; so that 
labor, while she dealt with it, had the easy and flexible 
charm of play. Angels do not toil, but let their good 
works grow out of them; and so did Phebe. 

The two relatives —the young maid and the old one 
—found time before nightfall, in the intervals of trade, 
to make rapid advances towards affection and confi- 
dence. A recluse, like Hepzibah, usually displays re- 
markable frankness, and at least temporary affability, 
on being absolutely cornered, and brought to the point 
of personal intercourse; like the angel whom Jacob 
wrestled with, she is ready to bless you when once 
overcome. 

The old gentlewoman took a dreary and proud satis- 
faction in leading Phebe from room to room of the 
house, and recounting the traditions with which, as we 
may say, the walls were lugubriously frescoed. She 
showed the indentations made by the lieutenant-gov- 
emor’s sword-hilt in the door-panels of the apartment 















































WMG: 





“YES, DEAR COUSIN,” ANSWERED PH@BE; “BUT, IN 


, | HEAR SOMEBODY RINGING IT” 


THE MEAN TIME 


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‘ 





MAY AND NOVEMBER. 107 


where old Colonel Pyncheon, a dead host, had received 
his affrighted visitors with an awful frown. The dusky 
terror of that frown, Hepzibah observed, was thought 
to be lingering ever since in the passage-way. She 
bade Phebe step into one of the tall chairs, and in- 
spect the ancient map of the Pyncheon territory at the 
eastward. In a tract of land on which she laid her 
finger, there existed a silver-mine, the locality of which 
was precisely pointed out in some memoranda of Col- 
dnel Pyncheon himself, but only to be made known 
when the family claim should be recognized by govern- 
ment. Thus it was for the interest of all New Eng- 
land that the Pyncheons should have justice done 
them. She told, too, how that there was undoubt- 
edly an immense treasure of English guineas hidden 
somewhere about the house, or in the cellar, or pos- 
sibly in the garden. 

*“‘ If you should happen to find it, Phebe,” said Hep- 
zibah, glancing aside at her with a grim yet kindly 
smile, ‘¢ we will tie up the shop-bell for good and all!” 

* Yes, dear cousin,” answered Phebe; “ but, in the 
mean time, I hear somebody ringing it! ” 

When the customer was gone, Hepzibah talked 
rather vaguely, and at great length, about a certain 
Alice Pyncheon, who had been exceedingly beautiful 
and accomplished in her lifetime, a hundred years ago. 
The fragrance of her rich and delightful character still 
lingered about the place where she had lived, as a 
dried rosebud scents the drawer where it has withered 
and perished. This lovely Alice had met with some 
great and mysterious calamity, and had grown thin 
and white, and gradually faded out of the world. But, 
even now, she was supposed to haunt the House of the 
Seven Gables, and, a great many times, — especially 


108 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


when one of the Pyncheons was to die, — she had been 
heard playing sadly and beautifully on the harpsichord. 
One of these tunes, just as it had sounded from her 
spiritual touch, had been written down by an amateur 
of music; it was so exquisitely mournful that nobody, 
to this day, could bear to hear it played, unless when a 
great sorrow had made them know the still profounder 
sweetness of it. 

“Was it the same harpsichord that you showed 
me?” inquired Phebe. 

“The very same,” said Hepzibah. “It was Alice 
Pyncheon’s harpsichord. When I was learning music, 
my father would never let me open it. So, as I could 
only play on my teacher’s instrument, I have forgotten 
all my music long ago.” 

Leaving these antique themes, the old lady began 
to talk about the daguerreotypist, whom, as he seemed 
to be a well-meaning and orderly young man, and in 
narrow circumstances, she had permitted to take up his 
residence in one of the seven gables. But, on seeing 
more of Mr. Holgrave, she hardly knew what to make 
of him. He had the strangest companions imaginable ; 
men with long beards, and dressed in linen blouses, 
and other such new-fangled and ill-fitting garments ; 
reformers, temperance lecturers, and all manner of 
cross-looking philanthropists; community-men, and 
come-outers, as Hepzibah believed, who acknowledged 
no law, and ate no solid food, but lived on the scent 
of other people’s cookery, and turned up their noses 
at the fare. As for the daguerreotypist, she had read 
a paragraph in a penny paper, the other day, accusing 
him of making a speech full of wild and disorganiz- 
ing matter, at a meeting of his banditti-like associates. 
For her own part, she had reason to believe that he 


MAY AND NOVEMBER. 109 


practised animal magnetism, and, if such things were 
in fashion nowadays, should be apt to suspect him 
of studying the Black Art up there in his lonesome 
chamber. 

“ But, dear cousin,” said Phebe, “ if the young man 
js so dangerous, why do you let him stay? If he does 
nothing worse, he may set the house on fire! ” 

*¢ Why, sometimes,” answered Hepzibah, “I have 
seriously made it a question, whether I ought not to 
send him away. But, with all his oddities, he is a 
quiet kind of a person, and has such a way of taking 
hold of one’s mind, that, without exactly liking him 
(for 1 don’t know enough of the young man), I should 
be sorry to lose sight of him entirely. A woman 
clings to slight acquaintances when she lives so much 
alone as I do.” 

“ But if Mr. Holgrave is a lawless person!” remon- 
strated Phebe, a part of whose essence it was to keep 
within the limits of law. 

“Oh!” said Hepzibah, carelessly, — for, formal as 
she was, still, in her life’s experience, she had gnashed 
her teeth against human law, — “I suppose he has a 
law of his own!” 


Vi. 
MAULE’S WELL. 


AFTER an early tea, the little country-girl strayed 
nto the garden. The enclosure had formerly been 
very extensive, but was now contracted within small 
compass, and hemmed about, partly by high wooden 
fences, and partly by the outbuildings of houses that 
stood on another street. In its centre was a grass-plat. 
surrounding a ruinous little structure, which showed 
just enough of its original design to indicate that it 
had once been a summer-house. A hop-vine, spring- 
ing from last year’s root, was beginning to clamber 
over it, but would be long in covering the roof with its 
green mantle. Three of the seven gables either fronted 
or looked sideways, with a dark solemnity of aspect, 
down into the garden. 

The black, rich soil had fed itself with the decay of 
a long period of time; such as fallen leaves, the petals 
of flowers, and the stalks and seed-vessels of vagrant 
and lawless plants, more useful after their death than 
ever while flaunting in the sun. The evil of these de- 
parted years would naturally have sprung up again, in 
such rank weeds (symbolic of the transmitted vices of 
society) as are always prone to root themselves about 
human dwellings. Phcebe saw, however, that their 
growth must have been checked by a degree of careful 
labor, bestowed daily and systematically on the garden. 
The white double rose-bush had evidently been propped 


MAULE’S WELL. inh 


up anew against the house since the commencement of 
the season; and a pear-tree and three damson-trees, 
which, except a row of currant-bushes, constituted the 
only varieties of fruit, bore marks of the recent am- 
putation of several superfluous or defective limbs, 
There were also a few species of antique and hereditary 
Howers, in no very flourishing condition, but scrupu- 
lously weeded ; as if some person, either out of love or 
curiosity, had been anxious to bring them to such per- 
fection as they were capable of attaining. The re- 
mainder of the garden presented a well-selected assort- 
ment of esculent vegetables, in a praiseworthy state 
of advancement. Summer squashes, almost in their 
golden blossom; cucumbers, now evincing a tendency 
to spread away from the main stock, and ramble far 
and wide; two or three rows of string-beans, and as 
many more that were about to festoon themselves on 
poles; tomatoes, occupying a site so sheltered and 
sunny that the plants were already gigantic, and prom- 
ised an early and abundant harvest. 

Phoebe wondered whose care and toil it could have 
been that had planted these vegetables, and kept the 
soil so clean and orderly. Not surely her cousin Hep- 
zibah’s, who had no taste nor spirits for the lady-like 
employment of cultivating flowers, and — with her re- 
cluse habits, and tendency to shelter herself within the 
dismal shadow of the house — would hardly have come 
forth under the speck of open sky to weed and hoe 
among the fraternity of beans and squashes. 

It being her first day of complete estrangement from 
rural objects, Pheebe found an unexpected charm in 
this little nook of grass, and foliage, and aristocratic 
flowers, and plebeian vegetables. The eye of Heaven 
seemed to look down into it pleasantly, and with a pe 


112 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


culiar smile, as if glad to perceive that nature, else 
where overwhelmed, and driven out of the dusty town, 
had here been able to retain a breathing-place. The 
spot acquired a somewhat wilder grace, and yet a very 
gentle one, from the fact that a pair of robins had built 
their nest in the pear-tree, and were making themselves 
exceedingly busy and happy in the dark intricacy of its 
boughs. Bees, too, — strange, to say, — had thought i/ 
worth their while to come hither, possibly from thi 
ranye of hives beside some farm-house miles away. 
How many erial voyages might they have made, in 
quest of honey, or honey-laden, betwixt dawn and sun- 
set! Yet, late as it now was, there still arose a pleas- 
ant hum out of one or two of the squash-blossoms, in 
the depths of which these bees were plying their golden 
labor. There was one other object in the garden which 
Nature might fairly claim as her inalienable property, 
in spite of whatever man could do to render it his own. 
This was a fountain, set round with a rim of old mossy 
stones, and paved, in its bed, with what appeared to 
be a sort of mosaic-work of variously colored pebbles. 
The play and slight agitation of the water, in its up- 
ward gush, wrought magically with these variegated 
pebbles, and made a continually shifting apparition of 
quaint figures, vanishing too suddenly to be definable. 
Thence, swelling over the rim of moss-grown stones, 
the water stole away under the fence, through what we 
regret to call a gutter, rather than a channel. 

Nor must we forget to mention a hen-coop of very 
reverend antiquity that stood in the farther corner of 
the garden, not a great way from the fountain. It now 
contained only Chanticleer, his two wives, and a soli. 
tary chicken. All of them were pure specimens of a 
breed which had been transmitted down as an heirloom 





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MUSTERED VIVACITY ENOUGH TO FLUTTER 


THE CHICKEN 


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UPWARD AND ALIGHT ON PHBE 


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MAULE’S WELL. 118 


fn the Pyncheon family, and were said, while in their 
prime, to have attained almost the size of turkeys, and, 
on the score of delicate flesh, to be fit for a prince’s 
table. In proof of the authenticity of this legendary 
renown, Hepzibah could have exhibited the shell of a 
great egg, which an ostrich need hardly have beer 
ashamed of. Be that as it might, the hens were nov 

scarcely larger than pigeons, and had a queer, rusty 

withered aspect, and a gouty kind of movement, and ¢ 
sleepy and melancholy tone throughout all the varia- 
tions of their clucking and cackling. It was evident 
that the race had degenerated, like many a noble race 
besides, in consequence of too strict a watchfulness to 
keep it pure. These feathered people had existed too 
long in their distinct variety ; a fact of which the pres- 
ent representatives, judging by their lugubrious deport- 
ment, seemed to be aware. ‘They kept themselves 
alive, unquestionably, and laid now and then an egg, 
and hatched a chicken; not for any pleasure of their 
own, but that the world might not absolutely lose what 
had once been so admirable a breed of fowls. The dis- 
tinguishing mark of the hens was a crest of lamenta- 
bly scanty growth, in these latter days, but so oddly 
and wickedly analogous to Hepzibah’s turban, that 
Phebe — to the poignant distress of her conscience, 
but inevitably— was led to fancy a general resem- 
blance betwixt these forlorn bipeds and her respecta- 
ble relative. 

The girl ran into the house to get some crumbs of 
bread, cold potatoes, and other such scraps as were 
suitable to the accommodating appetite of fowls. Re- 
turning, she gave a peculiar call, which they seemed to 
recognize. The chicken crept through the pales of the 


coop and ran, with some show of liveliness, to her feet; 
' VOL. IL 8 


114 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


while Chanticleer and the ladies of his household re. 
garded her with queer, sidelong glances, and then 
croaked one to another, as if communicating their sage 
opinions of her character. So wise, as well as antique, 
was their aspect, as to give color to the idea, not merely 
that they were the descendants of a time-honored race 
but that they had existed, in their individual capacity, 
ever since the House of the Seven Gables was founded, 
and were somehow mixed up with its destiny. They 
were a species of tutelary sprite, or Banshee; although 
winged and feathered differently from most other 
zuardian angels. 

“‘ Here, you odd little chicken!”’ said Phebe; “ here 
are some nice crumbs for you!” 

The chicken, hereupon, though almost as venerable 
in appearance as its mother, — possessing, indeed, the 
whole antiquity of its progenitors in miniature, — mus- 
tered vivacity enough to flutter upward and alight on 
Phebe’s shoulder. 

“That little fowl pays you a high compliment!” 
said a voice behind Phebe. 

Turning quickly, she was surprised at sight of a 
young man, who had found access into the garden by 
a door opening out of another gable than that whence 
she had emerged. He held a hoe in his hand, and, 
while Phcebe was gone in quest of the crumbs, had be- 
gun to busy himself with drawing up fresh earth about 
the roots of the tomatoes. 

“The chicken really treats you like an old acquaint 
ance,” continued he, in a quiet way, while a smile 
made his face pleasanter than Phebe at first fancied 
it. ‘*'Those venerable personages in the coop, too, 
seem very affably disposed. You are lucky to be in 
their good graces so soon! They have known me 


MAULE’S WELL. 115 


much longer, but never honor me with any familiarity, 
though hardly a day passes without my bringing them 
food. Miss Hepzibah, I suppose, will interweave the 
fact with her other traditions, and set it down that the 
fowls know you to be a Pyncheon !”’ 

“The secret is,” said Phoebe, smiling, “ that I have 
learned how to talk with hens and chickens.” 

“¢ Ah, but these hens,” answered the young man, — 
“these hens of aristocratic lineage would scorn to un- 
derstand the vulgar language of a barn-yard fowl. I 
prefer to think —and so would Miss Hepzibah — that 
they recognize the family tone. For you are a Pyn- 
cheon ?” 

“¢ My name is Phoebe Pyncheon,” said the girl, with 
@ manner of some reserve; for she was aware that her 
new acquaintance could be no other than the daguerre- 
otypist, of whose lawless propensities the old maid had 
given her a disagreeable idea. “I did not know that 
my cousin Hepzibah’s garden was under another per- 
son’s care.” 

“ Yes,” said Holgrave, “I dig, and hoe, and weed, 
in this black old earth, for the sake of refreshing my- 
self with what little nature and simplicity may be left 
in it, after men have so long sown and reaped here. 
I turn up the earth by way of pastime. My sober oc. 
cupation, so far as I have any, is with a lighter ma- 
terial. In short, I make pictures out of sunshine; 
and, not to be too much dazzled with my own trade, I 
have prevailed with Miss Hepzibah to let me lodge in 
one of these dusky gables. It is like a bandage over 
one’s eyes, to come into it. But would you like to see 
a specimen of my productions ?”’ 

“A daguerreotype likeness, do you mean?” asked 
Pheebe, with less reserve; for, in spite of prejudice, 


116 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


her own youthfulness sprang forward to meet his, ‘]} 
don’t much like pictures of that sort, — they are so 
hard and stern; besides dodging away from the eye, 
and trying to escape altogether. ‘They are conscious 
of looking very unamiable, I suppose, and therefore 
hate to be seen.” 

“Tf you would permit me,” said the artist, looking 
at Phebe, “ I should like to try whether the daguerre- 
otype can bring out disagreeable traits on a perfectly 
amiable face. But there certainly is truth in what 
you have said. Most of my likenesses do look un- 
amiable; but the very sufficient reason, I fancy, is, 
decause the originals are so. There is a wonderful 
insight in Heaven’s broad and simple sunshine. 
While we give it credit only for depicting the merest 
surface, it actually brings out the secret character with 
a truth that no painter would ever venture upon, even 
could he detect it. There is, at least, no flattery in 
my humble line of art. Now, here is a likeness which 
I have taken over and over again, and still with no 
better result. Yet the original wears, to common 
eyes, a very different expression. It would gratify 
me to have your judgment on this character.” 

He exhibited a daguerreotype miniature in a mo- 
rocco case. Phebe merely glanced at it, and gave it 
back. 

‘“‘ T know the face,” she replied ; “for its stern eye 
has been following me about all day. Itis_ my Puri- 
tan auoesicn arlio, Manes yondaedn Theale To be 
sure, you havé found some way of copying the portrait 
without its black velvet cap and gray beard, and have 
given him a modern coat and satin cravat, instead of 
his cloak and band. I don’t think him improved by 
wour alterations.” 


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MAULE’S WELL. 117 


“You would have seen other differences had you 
ooked a little longer,” said Holgrave, laughing, yet 
apparently much struck. ‘I can assure you that this 
is a modern face, and one which you will very prob- 
ably meet. Now, the remarkable point is, that the 
original wears, to the world’s eye, —and, for aught I 
know, to his most intimate friends, —an exceedingly 
pleasant countenance, indicative of benevolence, open- 
ness of heart, sunny good-humor, and other praise- 
worthy qualities of that cast. The sun, as you see, 
tells quite another story, and will not be coaxed out 
of it, after half a dozen patient attempts on my part. 
Here we have the man, sly, subtle, hard, imperious, 
and, withal, cold as ice. Look at that eye! Would 
you like to be at its mercy? At that mouth! Could 
it ever smile? And yet, if you could only see the 
benign smile of the original! It is so much the more 
unfortunate, as he is a public character of some emi- 
nence, and the likeness was intended to be engraved.” 

“Well, I don’t wish to see it any more,” observed 
Phebe, turning away her eyes. “It is certainly very 
like the old portrait. But my cousin Hepzibah has 
another picture, —a miniature. If the original is still 
in the world, I think he might defy the sun to make 
him look stern and hard.” 

“You have seen that picture, then!” exclaimed the 
artist, with an expression of much interest. ‘I never 
did, but have a great curiosity to do so. And you 
judge favorably of the face ?” 

‘“‘There never was a sweeter one,” said Phebe. “It 
is almost too soft and gentle for a man’s.” 

“Ts there nothing wild in the eye?” continued Hol- 
grave, so earnestly that it embarrassed Pheebe, as did 
also the quiet freedom with which he presumed on 


118 HE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


their so recent acquaintance. ‘Is there nothing dark 
or sinister anywhere? Could you not conceive the 
original to have been guilty of a great crime?” 

“Tt is nonsense,” said Phcebe, a little impatiently, 
“for us to talk about a picture which you have never 
seen. You mistake it for some other. A crime, in- 
deed! Since you are a friend of my cousin Hepzi 
bah’s, you should ask her to show you the picture.” 

“Tt will suit my purpose still better to see the orig- 
inal,” replied the daguerreotypist coolly. “As to his 
character, we need not discuss its points; they have 
already been settled by a competent tribunal, or one 
which called itself competent. But, stay! Do not go 
yet, if you please! I have a proposition to make 
you aa 

Phebe was on the point of retreating, but turned 
back, with some hesitation; for she did not exactly 
comprehend his manner, although, on better observa- 
tion, its feature seemed rather to be lack of ceremony 
than any approach to offensive rudeness. There was 
an odd kind of authority, too, in what he now pro- 
ceeded to say, rather as if the garden were his own 
than a place to which he was admitted merely by 
Hepzibah’s courtesy, 

“Tf agreeable to you,” he observed, ‘it would give 
me pleasure to turn over these flowers, and those an- 
cient and respectable fowls, to your care. Coming 
fresh from country air and occupations, you will soon 
feel the need of some such out-of-door employment. 
My own sphere does not so much lie among flowers. 
You can trim and tend them, therefore, as you please; 
and I will ask only the least trifle of a blossom, now 
and then, in exchange for all the good, honest kitchen. 
vegetables with which I propose to enrich Miss Hep 


MAULE’S WELL. 119 


gibah’s table. So we will be fellow-laborers, somewhat 
on the community system.” | 

Silently, and rather surprised at her own compli- 
ance, Phoebe accordingly betook herself to weeding a 
flower-bed, but busied herself still more with cogita- 
tions respecting this young man, with whom she so 
unexpectedly found herself on terms approaching to 
familiarity. She did not altogether like him. His 
character perplexed the little country-girl, as it might 
a more practised observer; for, while the tone of his 
zonversation had generally been playful, the impres- 
sion left on her mind was that of gravity, and, except 
as his youth modified it, almost sternness. She re- 
belled, as it were, against a certain magnetic element 
in the artist’s nature, which he exercised towards her, 
possibly without being conscious of it. 

After a little while, the twilight, deepened by the 
shadows of the fruit-trees and the surrounding build- 
ings, threw an obscurity over the garden. 

“There,” said Holgrave, “it is time to give over 
work! That last stroke of the hoe has cut off a bean- 
stalk. Good-night, Miss Phebe Pyncheon! Any 
bright day, if you will put one of those rosebuds in 
your hair, and come to my rooms in Central Street, I 
will seize the purest ray of sunshine, and make a pice 
ture of the flower and its wearer.” 

He retired towards his own solitary gable, but turned 
his head, on reaching the door, and called to Phebe, 
with a tone which certainly had laughter in it, yet 
which seemed to be more than half in earnest. 

“ Be careful not to drink at Maule’s well!” said 
he. ‘ Neither drink nor bathe your face in it!” 

‘“‘Maule’s well!’ answered Phebe. “Is that it 
with the rim of mossy stones? I have no thought of 
drinking there, — but why not?” 


120 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


“ Oh,” rejoined the daguerreotypist, ‘because, like 
an old lady’s eup of tea, it is water bewitched ! ” 

He vanished ; and Phebe, lingering a moment, saw 
a glimmering light, and then the steady beam of a 
lamp, in a chamber of the gable. On returning inte 
Hepzibah’s apartment of the house, she found the low- 
studded parlor so dim and dusky that her eyes could 
not penetrate the interior. She was indistinctly aware, 
however, that the gaunt figure of the old gentlewoman 
was sitting in one of the straight-backed chairs, a little 
withdrawn from the window, the faint gleam of which 
showed the blanched paleness of her cheek, turned side- 
way towards a corner. 

“Shall I light a lamp, Cousin Hepzibah?” she 
asked. 

“Do, if you please, my dear child,’’ answered Hep- 
zibah. ‘ But put it on the table in the corner of the 
passage. My eyes are weak; and I can seldom bear 
the lamplight on them.” 

What an instrument is the human voice! How won- 
derfully responsive to every emotion of the human 
soul! In Hepzibah’s tone, at that moment, there was 
a certain rich depth and moisture, as if the words, 
commonplace as they were, had been steeped in the 
warmth of her heart. Again, while lighting the lamp 
in the kitchen, Phoebe fancied that her cousin spoke to 
her. 

“In a moment, cousin !”’ answered the girl. “These 
matches just glimmer, and go out.” 

But, instead of a response from Hepzibah, she seemed 
to hear the murmur of an unknown voice. It was 
strangely indistinct, however, and less like articulate 
words than an unshaped sound, such as would be the 
atterance of feeling and sympathy, rather than of the 


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“IN A MOMENT, COUSIN!’’ ANSWERED THE GIRL. 
““THESE MATCHES JUST GLIMMER, AND GO OUT”’ 






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MAULE’S WELL. 121 


intellect. So vague was it, that its impression or echo 
in Pheebe’s mind was that of unreality. She con- 
cluded that she must have mistaken some other sound 
for that of the human voice; or else that it was al- 
together in her fancy. 

She set the lighted lamp in the passage, and again 
entered the parlor. Hepzibah’s form, though its sable 
outline mingled with the dusk, was now less imper- 
fectly visible. In the remoter parts of the room, how- 
ever, its walls being so ill adapted to reflect light, there 
was nearly the same obscurity as before. 

“Cousin,” said Phcebe, “did you speak to me just 
now ?”’ 

“No, child!” replied Hepzibah. 

Fewer words than before, but with the same mys- 
terious music in them! Mellow, melancholy, yet not 
mournful, the tone seemed to gush up out of the deep 
well of Hepzibah’s heart, all steeped in its profoundest 
emotion. There was a tremor in it, too, that — as all 
strong feeling is electric — partly communicated itself 
to Phebe. The girl sat silently fora moment. But 
soon, her senses being very acute, she became conscious 
of an irregular respiration in an obscure corner of 
the room. Her physical organization, moreover, being 
at once delicate and healthy, gave her a perception, 
operating with almost the effect of a spiritual medium, 
that somebody was near at hand. 

“My dear cousin,” asked she, overcoming an indee 
finable reluctance, “is there not some one in the room 
with us ?” 

“ Phoebe, my dear little girl,” said Hepzibah, after 
a moment’s pause, “ you were up betimes, and have 
been busy all day. Pray go to bed; for I am sure 
you must need rest. I will sit in the parlor awhile, 


122 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


and collect my thoughts. It has been my custom for 
more years, child, than you have lived!” 

While thus dismissing her, the maiden lady stept 
forward, kissed Phoebe, and pressed her to her heart, 
which beat against the girl’s bosom with a strong, 
high, and tumultuous swell. How came there to be sc 
much love in this desolate old heart, that it could 
afford to well over thus abundantly ? 

“Good night, cousin,” said Phebe, strangely af- — 
fected by Hepzibah’s manner. “If you begin to love 
me, I am glad!” 

She retired to her chamber, but did not soon fall 
asleep, nor then very profoundly. At some uncertain 
period in the depths of night, and, as it were, through 
the thin veil of a dream, she was conscious of a foot- 
step mounting the stairs heavily, but not with force 
and decision. The voice of Hepzibah, with a hush 
through it, was going up along with the footsteps; 
and, again, responsive to her cousin’s voice, Phebe 
heard that strange, vague murmur, which might be 
likened to an indistinct shadow of human utterance. 


VIL. 


THE GUEST. 


Wuen Phebe awoke, — which she did with the 
yarly twittering of the conjugal couple of robins in 
whe pear-tree,— she heard movements below stairs, 
and, hastening down, found Hepzibah already in the 
kitchen. She stood by a window, holding a book in 
slose contiguity to her nose, as if with the hope of 
gaining an olfactory acquaintance with its contents, 
since her imperfect vision made it not very easy to 
read them. If any volume could have manifested its 
essential wisdom in the mode suggested, it would cer- 
tainly have been the one now in Hepzibah’s hand ; 
and the kitchen, in such an event, would forthwith 
have steamed with the fragrance of venison, turkeys, 
zapons, larded partridges, puddings, cakes, and Christ- 
mas pies, in all manner of elaborate mixture and con- 
yoction. It was a cookery book, full of innumerable 
gld fashions of English dishes, and illustrated with 
angravings, which represented the arrangements of 
the table at such banquets as it might have befitted 
a nobleman to give in the great hall of his castle. 
And, amid these rich and potent devices of the culi- 
nary art (not one of which, probably, had been tested, 
within the memory of any man’s grandfather), poor 
Hepzibah was seeking for some nimble little titbit, 
which, with what skill she had, and such materials as 
were at hand, she might toss up for breakfast. 


124 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


Soon, with a deep sigh, she put aside the savory vol. 
ume, and inquired of Phoebe whether old Speckle, as 
she called one of the hens, had laid an egg the preced- 
ing day. Phebe ran to see, but returned without 
the expected treasure in her hand. At that instant, 
however, the blast of a fish-dealer’s conch was heard, 
announcing his approach along the street. With 
energetic raps at the shop- window, Hepzibah sum- 
moned the man in, and made purchase of what he 
warranted as the finest mackerel in his cart, and as 
fat a one as ever he felt with his finger so early in the 
season. Requesting Phebe to roast some coffee, — 
which she casually observed was the real Mocha, and 
so long kept that each of the small berries ought to be 
worth its weight in gold, — the maiden lady heaped 
fuel into the vast receptacle of the ancient fireplace 
in such quantity as soon to drive the lingering dusk 
out of the kitchen. The country-gizl, willing to give 
her utmost assistance, proposed to make an Indian 
cake, after her mother’s peculiar method, of easy 
manufacture, and which she could vouch for as posses- 
sing a richness, and, if rightly prepared, a delicacy, 
unequalled by any other mode of breakfast-cake. Hep- 
zibah gladly assenting, the kitchen was soon the scene 
of savory preparation. Perchance, amid their proper 
element of smoke, which eddied forth from the ill- 
constructed chimney, the ghosts of departed cook- 
maids looked wonderingly on, or peeped down the 
great breadth of the flue, despising the simplicity of 
the projected meal, yet ineffectually pining to thrust 
their shadowy hands into each inchoate dish. The 
half-starved rats, at any rate, stole visibly out of their 
hiding-places, and sat on their hind-legs, snuffing the 
fumy atmosphere, and wistfully awaiting an opportu- 
nity to nibble. 


THE GUEST. 125 


Hepzibah had no natural turn for cookery, and, to 
say the truth, had fairly incurred her present mea- 
greness by often choosing to go without her dinner 
rather than be attendant on the rotation of the spit, 
or ebullition of the pot. Her zeal over the fire, there- 
fore, was quite an heroic test of sentiment. It was 
touching, and positively worthy of tears Gf Phebe, 
the only spectator, except the rats and ghosts afore< 
said, had not been better employed than in shedding 
them), to see her rake out a bed of fresh and glowing 
coals, and proceed to broil the mackerel. Her usually 
pale cheeks were all ablaze with heat and hurry. She 
watched the fish with as much tender care and minute- 
ness of attention as if, — we know not how to express 
it otherwise, —as if her own heart were on the grid- 
iron, and her immortal happiness were involved in its 
being done precisely to a turn ! 

Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than 
a neatly arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table. 
We come to it freshly, in the dewy youth of the day, 
and when our spiritual and sensual elements are in 
better accord than at a later period; so that the ma- 
terial delights of the morning meal are capable of 
being fully enjoyed, without any very grievous re: 
proaches, whether gastric or conscientious, for yield. 
ing even a trifle overmuch to the animal department 
of our nature. The thoughts, too, that run around 
the ring of familiar guests have a piquancy and mirth- 
fulness, and oftentimes a vivid truth, which more 
rarely find their way into the elaborate intercourse 
of dinner. Hepzibah’s small and ancient table, sup- 
ported on its slender and graceful legs, and covered 
with a cloth of the richest damask, looked worthy to 
be the scene and centre of one of the cheerfullest of 


126 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


parties. ‘The vapor of the broiled fish arose like ix 
cense from the shrine of a barbarian idol, while the 
fragrance of the Mocha might have gratified the nos- 
trils of a tutelary Lar, or whatever power has scope 
over a modern breakfast-table. Phcebe’s Indian cakes 
were the sweetest offering of all,— in their hue befit 
ting the rustic altars of the innocent and golden age. 
—or, so brightly yellow were they, resembling some 
of the bread which was changed to glistening gold 
when Midas tried to eat it. The butter must not be 
forgotten, — butter which Pheebe herself had churned, 
in her own rural home, and brought it to her cousin 
as a propitiatory gift,— smelling of clover-blossoms, 
and diffusing the charm of pastoral scenery through 
the dark-panellied parlor. All this, with the quaint 
gorgeousness of the old china cups and saucers, and 
the crested spoons, and a silver cream-jug (Hepzibah’s 
only other article of plate, and shaped like the rudest 
porringer), set out a board at which the stateliest of 
old Colonel Pyncheon’s guests need not have scorned 
to take his place. But the Puritan’s face scowled 
down out of the picture, as if nothing on the table 
pleased his appetite. 

By way of contributing what grace she could, Phebe 
gathered some roses and a few other flowers, posses- 
sing either scent or beauty, and arranged them in a 
glass pitcher, which, having long ago lost its handle, 
was so much the fitter for a flower-vase. The early 
sunshine — as fresh as that which peeped into Eve’s 
bower while she and Adam sat at breakfast there— 
came twinkling through the branches of the pear-tree, 
and fell quite across the table. All was now ready. 
There were chairs and plates for three. A chair and 
plate for Hepzibah,— the same for Phebe, — but 
what other guest did her cousin look for? 


THE GUEST. 127 


Throughout this preparation there had been a com 
stant tremor in Hepzibah’s frame; an agitation so 
powerful that Phcebe could see the quivering of her 
gaunt shadow, as thrown by the firelight on the 
kitchen wall, or by the sunshine on the parlor floor. 
Its manifestations were so various, and agreed so little 
with one another, that the girl knew not what to make 
of it. Sometimes it seemed an ecstasy of delight and 
happiness. At such moments, Hepzibah would fling 
out her arms, and infold Pheebe in them, and kiss her 
cheek as tenderly as ever her mother had; she ap- 
peared to do so by an inevitable impulse, and as if her 
bosom were oppressed with tenderness, of which she 
must needs pour out a little, in order to gain breath- 
ing-room. The next moment, without any visible 
cause for the change, her unwonted joy shrank back, 
appalled, as it were, and clothed itself in mourning ; 
or it ran and hid itself, so to speak, in the dungeon of 
her heart, where it had long lain chained, while a cold, 
spectral sorrow took the place of the imprisoned joy, 
that was afraid to be enfranchised,—a sorrow as 
black as that was bright. She often broke into a lit- 
tle, nervous, hysteric laugh, more touching than any 
tears could be; and forthwith, as if to try which was 
the most touching, a gush of tears would follow; or 
perhaps the laughter and tears came both at once, and 
surrounded our poor Hepzibah, in a moral sense, with 
a kind of pale, dim rainbow. Towards Phebe, as 
we have said, she was affectionate, — far tenderer 
than ever before, in their brief acquaintance, except 
for that one kiss on the preceding night, — yet with 
a continually recurring pettishness and _ irritability. 
She would speak sharply to her; then, throwing aside 
all the starched reserve of her ordinary manner, ask 


128 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


pardon, and the next instant renew the just-forgiven 
injury. 

At last, when their mutual labor was all finished, 
she took Pheebe’s hand in her own trembling one. 

“Bear with me, my dear child,” she cried; “ for 
truly my heart is full to the brim! Bear with me; for 
I love you, Phebe, though I speak so roughly! Think 
nothing of it, dearest child! By and by, I shall be 
kind, and only kind! ” 

“‘ My dearest cousin, cannot you tell me what has 
happened?” asked Pheebe, with a sunny and tearful 
sympathy. ‘“ What is it that moves you so?” 

“Hush! hush! He is coming!” whispered Hep- 
zibah, hastily wiping her eyes. ‘Let him see you 
first, Phoebe; for you are young and rosy, and cannot 
help letting a smile break out whether or no. He al- 
ways liked bright faces! And mine is old now, and 
the tears are hardly dry on it. He never could abide 
tears. There; draw the curtain a little, so that the 
shadow may fall across his side of the table! But let 
there be a good deal of sunshine, too; for he never 
was fond of gloom, as some people are. He has had 
but little sunshine in his life, — poor Clifford, — and, 
oh, what a black shadow! Poor, poor Clifford !” 

Thus murmuring in an undertone, as if speaking 
rather to her own heart than to Phebe, the old gentle- 
woman stepped on tiptoe about the room, making such 
arrangements as suggested themselves at the crisis. 

Meanwhile there was a step in the passage-way, 
above stairs. Phoebe recognized it as the same which 
had passed upward, as through her dream, in the 
night-time. The approaching guest, whoever it might 
be, appeared to pause at the head of the staircase ; he 
paused twice or thrice in the descent; he paused again 










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PHCEBE COULD SEE THE QUIVERING OF HER GAUNT 


SHADOW, AS THROWN BY THE FIRELIGHT ON THE 
KITCHEN WALL 


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THE GUEST. 129 


at the foot. Each time, the delay seemed to be with- 
out purpose, but rather from a forgetfulness of the 
purpose which had set him in motion, or as if the per- 
son’s feet came involuntarily to a stand-still because 
the motive-power was too feeble to sustain his pro- 
gress. Finally, he made a long pause at the threshold 
of the parlor. He took hold of the knob of the door; 
then loosened his grasp without opening it. Hepzi. 
bah, her hands convulsively clasped, stood gazing at 
the entrance. 

** Dear Cousin Hepzibah, pray don’t look so!” said 
Phebe, trembling; for her cousin’s emotion, and 
this mysteriously reluctant step, made her feel as if a 
ghost were coming into the room. “You really 
frighten me! Is something awful going to happen?” 

“*Hush!” whispered Hepzibah. “Be cheerful! 
whatever may happen, be nothing but cheerful! ” 

The final pause at the threshold proved so long, 
that Hepzibah, unable to endure the suspense, rushed 
forward, threw open the door, and led in the stranger 
by the hand. At the first glance, Phoebe saw an el- 
derly personage, in an old-fashioned dressing-gown of 
faded damask, and wearing his gray or almost white 
hair of an unusual length. It quite overshadowed his 
forehead, except when he thrust it back, and stared 
vaguely about the room. After a very brief inspection 
of his face, it was easy to conceive that his footstep 
must necessarily be such an one as that which, slowly, 
and with as indefinite an aim as a child’s first journey 
across a floor, had just brought him hitherward. Yet 
there were no tokens that his physical strength might 
not have sufficed for a free and determined gait. It 
was the spirit of the man that could not walk. The 
expression of his countenance — while, notwithstand- 

VOL. ly 9 


180 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


ing, it had the light of reason in it — seemed to waver, 
and glimmer, and nearly to die away, and feebly to 
recover itself again. It was like a flame which we see 
twinkling among half-extinguished embers; we gaze 
at it more intently than if it were a positive blaze, 
gushing vividly upward,— more intently, but with a 
certain impatience, as if it ought either to kindle it. 
self into satisfactory splendor, or be at once extin- 
guished. 

For an instant after entering the room, the guest 
stood still, retaining Hepzibah’s hand, instinctively, as 
a child does that of the grown person who guides it. 
He saw Phebe, however, and caught an illumination 
from her youthful and pleasant aspect, which, indeed, 
threw a cheerfulness about the parlor, like the cizcle 
of reflected brilliancy around the glass vase of flowers 
that was standing in the sunshine. He made a saluta- 
tion, or, to speak nearer the truth, an ill-defined, abor- 
tive attempt at courtesy. Imperfect as it was, how- 
ever, it conveyed an idea, or, at least, gave a hint, of 
indescribable grace, such as no practised art of exter- 
nal manners could have attained. It was too slight to 
seize upon at the instant; yet, as recollected after- 
wards, seemed to transfigure the whole man. 

“ Dear Clifford,” said Hepzibah, in the tone with 
which one soothes a wayward infant, “this is our 
cousin Phebe, — little Phoebe Pyncheon, — Arthur’s 
only child, you know. She has come from the country 
to stay with us awhile; for our old house has grows 
to be very lonely now.” 

* Phoebe? — Phebe Pyncheon? — Phebe?” ree 
peated the guest, with a strange, sluggish, ill-defined 
utterance. ‘ Arthur’s child! Ah, I forget! No mat 


{2 


ter! She is very welcome! 


THE GUEST. 131 


*“ Come, dear Clifford, take this chair,” said Hepzi- 
bah, leading him to his place. “ Pray, Phebe, lower 
the curtain a very little more. Now let us begin 
breakfast.” 

The guest seated himself in the place assigned him, 
and looked strangely around. He was evidently trying 
to grapple with the present scene, and bring it home 
to his mind with a more satisfactory distinctness. He 
desired to be certain, at least, that he was here, in the 
low-studded, cross-beamed, oaken-panelled parlor, and 
not in some other spot, which had stereotyped itself 
into his senses. But the effort was too great to be 
sustained with more than a fragmentary success, Con- 
tinually, as we may express it, he faded away out of 
his place ; or, in other words, his mind and conscious- 
ness took their departure, leaving his wasted, gray, 
and melancholy figure —a substantial emptiness, a 
material ghost —to occupy his seat at table. Again, 
after a blank moment, there would be a flickering 
taper-gleam in his eyeballs. It betokened that his 
spiritual part had returned, and was doing its best to 
kindle the heart’s household fire, and light up intel- 
lectual lamps in the dark and ruinous mansion, where 
it was doomed to be a forlorn inhabitant. 

At one of these moments of less torpid, yet still im- 
perfect animation, Phoebe became convinced of what 
she had at first rejected as too extravagant and start- 
ling an idea. She saw that the person before her 
must have been the original of the beautiful miniature 
in her cousin Hepzibah’s possession. Indeed, with a 
feminine eye for costume, she had at once identified 
the damask dressing-gown, which enveloped him, as 
the same in figure, material, and fashion, with that 
$0 elaborately represented in the picture. This old, 


132 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


faded garment, with all its pristine brilliancy extinct, 
seemed, in some indescribable way, to translate the 
wearer's untold misfortune, and make it perceptible 
to the beholder’s eye. It was the better to be dis- 
cerned, by this exterior type, how worn and old were 
the soul’s more immediate garments; that form and 
countenance, the beauty and grace of which had al- 
most transcended the skill of the most exquisite of 
artists. It could the more adequately be known that 
the soul of the man must have suffered some miserable 
wrong, from its earthly experience. There he seemed 
to sit, with a dim veil of decay and ruin betwixt him 
and the world, but through which, at flitting intervals, 
might be caught the same expression, so refined, so 
softly imaginative, which Malbone — venturing a happy ~ 
touch, with suspended breath — had imparted to the 
miniature! There had been something so innately 
characteristic in this look, that all the dusky years, 
and the burden of unfit calamity which had fallen 
upon him, did not suffice utterly to destroy it. 

Hepzibah had now poured out a cup of deliciously 
fragrant coffee, and presented it to her guest. As-his 
eyes met hers, he seemed bewildered and disquieted. 

“Ts this you, Hepzibah ?”’ he murmured, sadly; 
then, more apart, and perhaps unconscious that he 
was overheard, ‘“ How changed! how changed! And 
is she angry with me? Why does she bend her brow 
so?” 

Poor Hepzibah! It was that wretched scowl which 
time and her near-sightedness, and the fret of inward 
discomfort, had rendered so habitual that any vehe 
mence of mood invariably evoked it. But at the indis 
tinct murmur of his words her whole face grew tender, 
and even lovely, with sorrowful affection ; the harsh 


THE GUEST. 133 


ness of her features disappeared, as it were, behind 
the warm and misty glow. 

“ Angry!” she repeated ; “ angry with you, Clif 
ford!” 

Her tone, as she uttered the exclamation, had a 
plaintive and really exquisite melody thrilling through 
— it, yet without subduing a certain something which an 
obtuse auditor might still have mistaken for asperity. 
It was as if some transcendent musician should draw 
@ soul-thrilling sweetness out of a cracked instrument, 
which makes its physical imperfection heard in the 
midst of ethereal harmony, — so deep was the sensi- 
bility that found an organ in Hepzibah’s voice ! 

“There is nothing but love, here, Clifford,” she 
added, — “nothing but love! You are at home! ” 

The guest responded to her tone by a smile, which 
did not half light up his face. Feeble as it was, how- 
ever, and gone in a moment, it had a charm of won- 
derful beauty. It was followed by a coarser expres- 
sion ; or one that had the effect of coarseness on the 
fine mould and outline of his countenance, because 
there was nothing intellectual to temper it. It was 
a look of appetite. He ate food with what might 
almost be termed voracity ; and seemed to forget him- 
self, Hepzibah, the young girl, and everything else 
around him, in the sensual enjoyment which the boun- 
tifully spread table afforded. In his natural system, 
though high-wrought and delicately refined, a sensibil- 
ity to the delights of the palate was probably inherent. 
It would have been kept in check, however, and even 
converted into an accomplishment, and one of the 
thousand modes of intellectual culture, had his more 
ethereal characteristics retained their vigor. But as 
it existed now, the effect was painful and made Phebe 
droop her eyes. 


13834 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


In a little while the guest became sensible of the frar 
grance of the yet untasted coffee. He quaffed it ea- 
gerly. The subtle essence acted on him like a charmed 
draught, and caused the opaque substance of his animal 
being to grow transparent, or, at least, translucent; se 
that a spiritual gleam was transmitted through it, with 
a clearer lustre than hitherto. 

‘More, more!” he cried, with nervous haste in his 
utterance, as if anxious to retain his grasp of what 
sought toescape him. ‘This is what I need! Give 
me more!” 

Under this delicate and powerful influence he sat 
more erect, and looked out from his eyes with a glance 
that took note of what it rested on. It was not sa 
much that his expression grew more intellectual ; this, 
though it had its share, was not the most peculiar ef- 
fect. Neither was what we call the moral nature so 
forcibly awakened as to present itself in remarkable 
prominence. But a certain fine temper of being was 
now not brought out in full relief, but changeably 
and imperfectly betrayed, of which it was the func- 
tion to deal with all beautiful and enjoyable things. 
In a character where it should exist as the chief at- 
tribute, it would bestow on its possessor an exquisite 
taste, and an enviable susceptibility of happiness. 
Beauty would be his life; his aspirations would all 
tend toward it; and, allowing his frame and physical 
organs to be in consonance, his own developments 
would likewise be beautiful. Such a man should have 
nothing to do with sorrow ; nothing with strife; noth. 
ing with the martyrdom which, in an infinite variety 
of shapes, awaits those who have the heart, and will, 
and conscience, to fight a battle with the world. Te 
these heroic tempers, such martyrdom is the richest 


THE GUEST. 135 


meed in the world’s gift. To the individual before 
us, it could only be a grief, intense in due proportion 
with the severity of the infliction. (He had no right 
to be a martyr ;\and, beholding him so fit to be happy 
and so feeble for all other purposes, a generous, strong, 
and noble spirit would, methinks, have been ready to 
sacrifice what little enjoyment it might have planned 
for itself, —— it would have flung down the hopes, so 
paltry in its regard, — if thereby the wintry blasts of 
our rude sphere might come tempered to such a man. 
Not to speak it harshly or scornfully, it seemed. Clif 
ford’s nature to be a Sybarite. It was perceptible, 
even there, in the dark old parlor, in the inevitable 
polarity with which his eyes were attracted towards 
the quivering play of sunbeams through the shadowy 
foliage. It was seen in his appreciating notice of the 
vase of flowers, the scent of which he inhaled with a 
zest almost peculiar to a physical organization so re- 
fined that spiritual ingredients are moulded in with it. 
It was betrayed in the unconscious smile with which 
he regarded Phebe, whose fresh and maidenly figure 
was both sunshine and flowers, — their essence, in a 
prettier and more agreeable mode of manifestation. 
Not less evident was this love and necessity for the 


Beautiful, in the instinctive caution with which, even’ 


so soon, his eyes turned away from his hostess, and 
wandered to any quarter rather than come back. It 
was Hepzibah’s misfortune, — not Clifford’s fault. 
How could he,— so yellow as she was, so wrinkled, 
so sad of mien, with that odd uncouthness of a turban 
on her head, and that most perverse of scowls contort- 
ing her brow, — how could he love to gaze at her? 
But, did he owe her no affection for so much as she 
had silently given? He owed her nothing. A nature 


136 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


like Clifford’s can contract no debts of that kind. It 
is —— we say it without censure, nor in diminution of 
the claim which it indefeasibly possesses on beings of 
another mould — it is always selfish in its essence ; and 
we must give it leave to be so, and heap up our heroic 
and disinterested love upon it so much the more, with- 
out arecompense. Poor Hepzibah knew this truth, or, 
at least, acted on the instinct of it. So long estranged 
from what was lovely as Clifford had been, she re- 
joiced — rejoiced, though with a present sigh, and a 
secret purpose to shed tears in her own chamber — 
that he had brighter objects now before his eyes than 
her aged and uncomely features. They never pos- 
sessed a charm; and if they had, the canker of her 
grief for him would long since have destroyed it. 

The guest leaned back in his chair. Mingled in 
his countenance with a dreamy delight, there was a 
troubled look of effort and unrest. He was seeking to 
make himself more fully sensible of the scene around 
him ; or, perhaps, dreading it to be a dream, or a play 
of imagination, was vexing the fair moment with a 
struggle for some added brilliancy and more durable 
illusion. 

“¢ How pleasant !— How delightful ! ” he murmured, 
but not as if addressing any one. “ Will it last? How 
balmy the atmosphere through that open window! An 
open window! How beautiful that play of sunshine! 
Those flowers, how very fragrant! That young girl’s 
face, how cheerful, how blooming ! —a flower with the 
dew on it, and sunbeams in the dew-drops! Ah! this 
must be alla dream! A dream! <A dream! But it 
has quite hidden the four stone walls! ” 

Then his face darkened, as if the shadow of a cav. 
ern or a dungeon had come over it; there was vo more 





» 
‘My, Sa pa a ne 
"% Ulieyry, F% 


Y 4 ‘Wy, y Z by’ 


Se 


‘¢ aH! — LET ME SEE! — LET ME HOLD IT!”’ 





THE GUEST. 137 


light in its expression than might have come through 
the iron grates of a prison window, — still lessening, 
too, as if he were sinking farther into the depths, 
Phebe (being of that quickness and activity of tems 
perament that she seldom long refrained from taking 
a part, and generally a good one, in what was go- 
ing forward) now felt herself moved to address the 
stranger. 

‘‘ Here is a new kind of rose, which I found this 
morning in the garden,” said she, choosing a small 
crimson one from among the flowers in the vase. 
“There will be but five or six on the bush this sea- 
son. ‘This is the most perfect of them all; not a 
speck of blight or mildew in it. And how sweet it is! 
— sweet like no other rose! One can never forget 
that scent !”’ 

“ Ah! — let me see! — let me hold it!” cried the 
guest, eagerly seizing the flower, which, by the spell 
peculiar to remembered odors, brought innumerable 
associations along with the fragrance that it exhaled. 
“Thank you! This has done me good. I remember 
how I used to prize this flower, — long ago, I suppose, 
very long ago! — or was it only yesterday? It makes 
me feel young again! AmI young? Lither this re- 
membrance is singularly distinct, or this consciousness 
strangely dim! But how kind of the fair young girl! 
Thank you! Thank you! ” 

The favorable excitement derived from this little 
crimson rose afforded Clifford the brightest moment 
which he enjoyed at the breakfast-table. It might 
have lasted longer, but that his eyes happened, soon 
afterwards, to rest on the face of the old Puritan, who, 
out of his dingy frame and lustreless canvas, was look« 
ing down on the scene like a ghost, and a most ilk 


188 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


tempered and ungenial one. The guest made an im: 
patient gesture of the hand, and addressed Hepzibah 
with what might easily be recognized as the licensed ir- 
ritability of a petted member of the family. 

*¢ Hepzibah !— Hepzibah!” cried he with no little 
force and distinctness, “why do you keep that odious 
picture on the wall? Yes, yes! —that is precisely 
your taste! Ihave told you, a thousand times, that 
it was the evil genius ot the house! — my evil genius 
particularly! Take it down, at once! ” 

“ Dear Clifford,” said Hepzibah, sadly, ‘ you know 
it cannot be!” 

“Then, at all events,” continued he, still speaking 
with some energy, “ pray cover it with a crimson cur- 
tain, broad enough to hang in folds, and with a golden 
border and tassels. I cannot bear it! It must not 
stare me in the face!” 

‘Yes, dear Clifford, the picture shall be covered,” 
said Hepzibah, soothingly. ‘There is a crimson cur- 
tain in a trunk above stairs, — a little faded and 
moth-eaten, I’m afraid, — but Phcebe and I will do 
wonders with it.” 

“This very day, remember!” said he; and then 
added, in a low, self-communing voice, “* Why should 
we live in this dismal house at all? Why not go to 
the South of France ? — to Italy ?— Paris, Naples, 
Venice, Rome? MHepzibah will say we have not the 
means. A droll idea that! ” 

He smiled to himself, and threw a glance of fine 
sarcastic meaning towards Hepzibah. 

But the several moods of feeling, faintly as they were 
marked, through which he had passed, occurring in 
so brief an interval of time, had evidently wearied the 
stranger. He was probably accustomed to a sad monot 


THE GUEST. 139 


ony of life, not so much flowing in a stream, however 
sluggish, as stagnating in a pool around his feet. A 
slumberous veil diffused itself over his countenance, 
and had an effect, morally speaking, on its naturally 
delicate and elegant outline, like that which a brooding 
mist, with no sunshine in it, throws over the features 
of alandscape. He appeared to become grosser, — 
almost cloddish. If aught of interest or beauty — 
even ruined beauty — had heretofore been visible in 
this man, the beholder might now begin to doubt it, 
and to accuse his own imagination of deluding hin 
with whatever grace had flickered over that visage, 
and whatever exquisite lustre had gleamed in those 
filmy eyes. 

Before he had quite sunken away, however, the 
sharp and peevish tinkle of the shop-bell made itself 
audible. Striking most disagreeably on Clifford’s au- 
ditory organs and the characteristic sensibility of his 
nerves, it caused him to start upright out of his chair. 

“Good heavens, Hepzibah! what horrible disturb- 
ance have we now in the house?” cried he, wreaking 
his resentful impatience — as a matter of course, and 
a custom of old —on the one person in the world that 
loved him. “I have never heard such a hateful 
clamor! Why do you permit it? In the name of all 
dissonance, what can it be?” 

It was very remarkable into what prominent relief 
—even as if a dim picture should leap suddenly from 
its canvas —Clifford’s character was thrown by this 
apparently trifling annoyance. The secret was, that 
an individual of his temper can always be pricked 
more acutely through his sense of the beautiful and 
harmonious than through his heart. It is even possi- 
ble — for similar cases have often happened — that if 


{40 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


Clifford, in his foregoing life, had enjoyed the means 
of cultivating his taste to its utmost perfectibility, that 
subtile attribute might, before this period, have com- 
pletely eaten out or filed away his affections. Shall 
we venture to pronounce, therefore, that his long and 
clack calamity may not have had a redeeming drop of 
mercy at the bottom ? 

“‘ Dear Clifford, I wish I could keep the sound from 
your ears,” said Hepzibah, patiently, but reddening 
with a painful suffusion of shame. ‘It is very disa- 
greeable even to me. But, do you know, Clifford, 1 
have something to tell you? This ugly noise, — pray 
run, Phebe, and see who is there ! — this naughty lit- 
tle tinkle is nothing but our shop-bell!” © 

‘*¢ Shop-bell!” repeated Clifford, with a bewildered 
stare. 

‘“¢ Yes, our shop-bell,” said Hepzibah, a certain nat- 
ural dignity, mingled with deep emotion, now assert- 
ing itself in her manner. “ For you must know, dear- 
est Clifford, that we are very poor. And there was 
no other resource, but either to accept assistance from 
a hand that I would push aside (and so would you!) 
were it to offer bread when we were dying for it, — 
no help, save from him, or else to earn our subsistence 
with my own hands! Alone, I might have been con- 
tent to starve. But you were to be given back to me! 
Do you think, then, dear Clifford,” added she, with a 
wretched smile, “that I have brought an irretrievable 
disgrace on the old house, by opening a little shop 
in the front gable? Our great-great-grandfather did 
the same, when there was far less need! Are you 
ashamed of me?” 

“Shame! Disgrace! Do you speak these words 
to me, Hepzibah ?” said Clifford, — not angrily, how 





“GOOD HEAVENS, HEPZIBAH! WHAT HORRIBLE DIS- 
TURBANCES HAVE WE NOW IN THE HOUSE ?”’ 





THE GUEST. 141 


ever; for when a man’s spirit has been thoroughly 
crushed, he may be peevish at small offences, but 
never resentful of great ones. So he spoke with only 
a grieved emotion. ‘ It was not kind to say so, Hep- 
zibah! What shame can befall me now?” 

And then the unnerved man —he that had been 
born for enjoyment, but had met a doom so very 
wretched — burst into a woman’s passion of tears. It 
was but of brief continuance, however; soon leaving 
him in a quiescent, and, to judge by his countenance, 
not an uncomfortable state. From this mood, too, he 
partially rallied for an instant, and looked at Hepzi- 
bah with a smile, the keen, half-derisory purport of 
which was a puzzle to her. 

«¢ Are we so very poor, Hepzibah ?” said he. 

Finally, his chair being deep and softly cushioned, 
Clifford fell asleep. Hearing the more regular rise 
and fall of his breath (which, however, even then, in- 
stead of being strong and full, had a feeble kind of 
tremor, corresponding with the lack of vigor in his 
character), — hearing these tokens of settled slumber, 
Hepzibah seized the opportunity to peruse his face 
more attentively than she had yet dared to do. Her 
heart melted away in tears; her profoundest spirit 
sent forth a moaning voice, low, gentle, but inexpres- 
sibly-sad. In this depth of grief and pity she felt that 
there was no irreverence in gazing at his altered, aged. 
faded, ruined face. But no sooner was she a little re- 
lieved than her conscience smote her for gazing curi- 
ously at him, now that he was so changed; and, turn- 
ing hastily away, Hepzibah let down the curtain over 
the sunny window, and left Clifford to slumber there. 


Vill. 
THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY. 


PHEBE, on entering the shop, beheld there the al. 
veady familiar face of the little devourer—if we can 
reckon his mighty deeds aright — of Jim Crow, the 
elephant, the camel, the dromedaries, and the locomo- 
tive. Having expended his private fortune, on the 
two preceding days, in the purchase of the above un- 
heard-of luxuries, the young gentleman’s present er- 
rand was on the part of his mother, in quest of three 
eggs and half a pound of raisins. These articles 
Pheebe accordingly supplied, and, as a mark of grati- 
tude for his previous patronage, and a slight super- 
added morsel after breakfast, put likewise into his 
hand a whale! The great fish, reversing his experi- 
ence with the prophet of Nineveh, immediately began 
his progress down the same red pathway of fate 
whither so varied a caravan had preceded him. This 
remarkable urchin, in truth, was the very emblem of 
old Father Time, both in respect of his all-devouring 
appetite for men and things, and because he, as well 
as Time, after ingulfing thus much of creation, looked 
almost as youthful as if he had been just that moment 
made. 

After partly closing the door, the child turned back, 
and mumbled something to Phebe, which, as the 
whale was but half disposed of, she could not perfectly 
iderstand. 


THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY. 143 


‘“What did you say, my little fellow?” asked she. 

“* Mother wants to know,” repeated Ned Higgins, 
more distinctly, “ how Old Maid Pyncheon’s brother 
does? Folks say he has got home.” 

‘My cousin Hepzibah’s brother!” exclaimed Pheebe, 
surprised at this sudden explanation of the relationship 
between Hepzibah and her guest. “ Her brother! 
And where can he have been ?” 

The little boy only put his thumb to his broad snub- 
nose, with that look of shrewdness which a child, spend- 
ing much of his time in the street, so soon learns to 
throw over his features, however unintelligent in them- 
selves. Then as Phebe continued to gaze at him, 
without answering his mother’s message, he took his 
departure. 

As the child went down the steps, a gentleman as- 
cended them, and made his entrance into the shop. 
It was the portly, and, had it possessed the advantage 
of a little more height, would have been the stately fig- 
ure of a man considerably in the decline of life, dressed 
in a black suit of some thin stuff, resembling broad- 
cloth as closely as possible. A gold-headed cane, of 
rare Oriental wood, added materially to the high re- 
spectability of his aspect, as did also a neckcloth of the 
utmost snowy purity, and the conscientious polish of 
his boots. His dark, square countenance, with its al- 
most shaggy depth of eyebrows, was naturally impres- 
sive, and would, perhaps, have been rather stern, had 
not the gentleman considerately taken upon himself to 
mitigate the harsh effect by a look of exceeding good- 
humor and benevolence. Owing, however, to a some- 
what massive accumulation of animal substance about 
the lower region of his face, the look was, perhaps, 
unctuous, rather than spiritual, and had, so to, speak, 


144. THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


a kind of fleshly effulgence, not altogether so satisfac 
tory as he doubtless intended it to be. A susceptible 
observer, at any rate, might have regarded it as af. 
fording very little evidence of the general benignity of 
soul whereof it purported to be the outward reflection. 
And if the observer chanced to be ill-natured, as well 
as acute and susceptible, he would probably, suspect 
that the smile on the gentleman’s face was a good deal 
akin to the shine on his boots, and that each must have 
cost him and his boot-black, respectively, a good deal 
of hard labor to bring out and preserve them. 

As the stranger entered the little shop, where the 
projection of the second story and the thick foliage 
of the elm-tree, as well as the commodities at the win- 
dow, created a sort of gray medium, his smile grew as 
intense as if he had set his heart on counteracting 
the whole gloom of the atmosphere (besides any moral 
gloom pertaining to Hepzibah and her inmates) by the 
unassisted light of his countenance. On perceiving a 
young rose-bud of a girl, instead of the gaunt pres- 
ence of the old maid, a look of surprise was manifest. 
He at first knit his brows; then smiled with more unce- 
tuous benignity than ever. 

“ Ah, I see how it is!” said he, in a deep voice, — 
a voice which, had it come from the throat of an un- 
cultivated man, would have been gruff, but, by dint of 
careful training, was now sufficiently agreeable, — “ I 
was not aware that Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon had com 
menced business under such favorable auspices. You 
are her assistant, I suppose ?” 

“T certainly am,” answered Phebe, and added, with 
a little air of lady-like assumption (for, civil as the 
gentleman was, he evidently took her to be a young 
person serving for wages), “I am a cousin of Miss 
Uepzibah, on a visit to her,” 





‘‘HER BROTHER! AND WHERE CAN HE HAVE BEEN?”’ 


THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY. 145 


“ Her cousin ? —and from the country? Pray par 
don me, then,” said the gentleman, bowing and smil. 
ing, as Phebe never had been bowed to nor smiled on 
before ; ‘in that case, we must be better acquainted ; 
for, unless I am sadly mistaken, you are my own little 
kinswoman likewise! Let me see, — Mary? — Dolly? 
o— Phoebe ? — yes, Pheebe is the name! Is it possible 
that you are Pheebe Pyncheon, only child of my dear 
cousin and classmate, Arthur? Ah, I see your father 
now, about your mouth! Yes, yes! we must be better 
acquainted! J am your kinsman, my dear. Surely 
you must have heard of Judge Pyncheon ? ” 

As Pheebe courtesied in reply, the Judge bent for- 
ward, with the pardonable and even praiseworthy pur- 
pose — considering the nearness of blood, and the dif- 
ference of age —of bestowing on his young relative a 
kiss of acknowledged kindred and natural affection. 
Unfortunately (without design, or only with such in- 
stinctive design as gives no account of itself to the 
intellect) Phoebe, just at the critical moment, drew 
back ; so that her highly respectable kinsman, with his 
body bent over the counter, and his lips protruded, 
was betrayed into the rather absurd predicament of 
kissing the empty air. It was a modern parallel to 
the case of Ixion embracing a cloud, and was so much 
the more ridiculous, as the Judge prided himself on 
eschewing all airy matter, and never mistaking a 
shadow for a substance. The truth was, — and it is 
Pheebe’s only excuse, — that, although Judge Pyn- 
cheon’s glowing benignity might not be absolutely un- 
pleasant to the feminine beholder, with the width of a 
street, or even an ordinary-sized room, interposed be- 
tween, yet it became quite too intense, when this dark, 
full-fed physiognomy (so roughly bearded, too, that 

10 


VOL. Iii. 


146 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


no razor could ever make it smooth) sought to bring it 
self into actual contact with the object of its regards. 
The man, the sex, somehow or other, was entirely too 
prominent in the Judge’s demonstrations of that sort. 
Pheebe’s eyes sank, and, without knowing why, she felt 
herself blushing deeply under his look. Yet she had 
been kissed before, and without any particular squeam- 
ishness, by perhaps half a dozen different cousins, 
younger as well as older than this dark-browed, grisly- 
bearded, white-neck-clothed, and unctuously-benevolent 
Judge! Then, why not by him? 

On raising her eyes, Phebe was startled by the 
change in Judge Pyncheon’s face. It was quite as 
striking, allowing for the difference of scale, as that 
betwixt a landscape under a broad sunshine and just 
before a thunder-storm; not that it had the passionate 
intensity of the latter aspect, but was cold. hard, im- 
mitigable, like a day-long brooding cloud. 

“ Dear me! what is to be done now?” thought the 
country-girl to herself. ‘ He looks as if there were 
nothing softer in him than a rock, nor milder than the 
east wind! I meant no harm! Since he is really my 
cousin, I would have let him kiss me, if 1 could!” 

Then, all at once, it struck Phebe that this very 
Judge Pyncheon was the original of the miniature 
which the daguerreotypist had shown her in the gar- 
den, and that the hard, stern, relentless look, now on 
his face, was the same that the sun had so inflexibly 
oersisted in bringing out. Was it, therefore, no mo- 
mentary mood, but, however skilfully concealed, the 
settled temper of his life? And not merely so, but 
was it hereditary in him, and transmitted down, as 
a precious heirloom, from that bearded ancestor, ip 
whose picture both the expression, and, to a singular 


THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY. 147 


degree, the features of the modern Judge were shown 
as by a kind of prophecy? A deeper philosopher than 
Phebe might have found something very terrible in 
this idea. It implied that the weaknesses and defects, 
the bad passions, the mean tendencies, and the moral 
diseases which lead to crime are handed down from 
one generation to another, by a far surer process of 
transmission than human law has been able to estab- 
lish in respect to the riches and honors which it seeks 
to entail upon posterity. 

But, as it happened, scarcely had Pheebe’s eyes 
rested again on the Judge’s countenance than all its 
ugly sternness vanished ; and she found herself quite 
overpowered by the sultry, dog-day heat, as it were, 
of benevolence, which this excellent man diffused out 
of his great heart into the surrounding atmosphere, 
—very much like a serpent, which, as a preliminary 
to fascination, is said to fill the air with his peculiar 
odor. 

“T like that, Cousin Phebe!” cried he, with an 
emphatic nod of approbation. “I like it much, my 
little cousin! You are a good child, and know how 
_ to take eare of yourself. A young girl— especially 
if she be a very pretty one —can never be too chary 
of her lips.” 

“Indeed, sir,” said Phebe, trying to laugh the mat 
ter off, “I did not mean to be unkind.” 

Nevertheless, whether or no it were entirely owing 
to the inauspicious commencement of their acquaint- 
ance, she still acted under a certain reserve, which 
was by no means customary to her frank and genial 
nature. The fantasy would not quit her, that the 
original Puritan, of whom she had heard so many 
sombre traditions, — the progenitor of the whole race 


148 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


of New England Pyncheons, the founder of the House 
of the Seven Gables, and who had died so strangely 
in it, —had now stept into the shop. In these days of 
off-hand equipment, the matter was easily enough ar- 
ranged. On his arrival from the other world, he had 
merely found it necessary to spend a quarter of an 
hour at a barber’s, who had trimmed down the Puri- 
tan’s full beard into a pair of grizzled whiskers, then, 
patronizing a ready-made clothing establishment, he 
had exchanged his velvet doublet and sable cloak, 
with the richly worked band under his chin, for a 
white collar and cravat, coat, vest, and pantaloons; 
and lastly, putting aside his steel-hilted broadsword to 
take up a gold-headed cane, the Colonel Pyncheon of 
two centuries ago steps forward as the Judge of the 
passing moment! | 
Of course, Phebe was far too sensible a girl to en- 
tertain this idea in any other way than as matter for a 
smile. Possibly, also, could the two personages have 
stood together before her eye, many points of differ- 
ence would have been perceptible, and perhaps only a 
general resemblance. The long lapse of intervening 
years, in a climate so unlike that which had fostered the 
ancestral Englishman, must inevitably have wrought 
important changes in the physical system of his de- 
scendant. The Judge’s volume of muscle could hardly 
be the same as the Colonel’s ; there was undoubtedly 
less beef in him. Though looked upon as a weighty 
man among his contemporaries in respect of animal 
substance, and as favored with a remarkable degree of 
fundamental development, well adapting him for the 
indicial bench, we conceive that the modern Judge 
Pyncheon, if weighed in the same balance with his 
ancestor, would have required at least an old-fashioned 


PHBE, JUST AT THE 


sorte 


waorn 


ie 


v 
i 


CRITICAL 


DREW 





BACK 





THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY. 149 


fifty-six to keep the scale in equilibrio. Then the 
Judge’s face had lost the ruddy English hue that 
showed its warmth through all the duskiness of the 
Colonel’s weather-beaten cheek, and had taken a sal- 
low shade, the established complexion of his country- 
men. If we mistake not, moreover, a certain quality 
of nervousness had become more or less manifest, even 
in so solid a specimen of Puritan descent as the gen- 

Seeramemoiinder discussions aAs one-of its eifects 
it bestowed on—hi e a quicker mobility 
than the old Englishman’s had possessed, and keener 
vivacity, but at the expense of a sturdier something, 
on which these acute endowments seemed to act like 
dissolving acids. This process, for aught we know, 
may belong to the great system of human progress, 
which, with every ascending footstep, as it diminishes 
the necessity for animal force, may be destined grad- 
ually to spiritualize us, by refining away our grosser 
attributes of body. If so, Judge Pyncheon could en- 
dure a century or two more of such refinement as well 
as most other men. 

The similarity, intellectual and moral, between the 
Judge and his ancestor appears to have been at least 
as strong as the resemblance of mien and feature 
would afford reason to anticipate. In old Colonel 
Pyncheon’s funeral discourse the clergyman absolutely 
canonized his deceased parishioner, and opening, as 
it were, a vista through the roof of the church, and 
thence through the firmament above, showed him 
seated, harp in hand, among the crowned choristers 
of the spiritual world. On his tombstone, too, the 
record is highly eulogistic; nor does history, so far 
as he holds a place upon its page, assail the consist- 
ency and uprightness of his character. So also, as 


‘150 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


regards the Judge Pyncheon of to-day, neither clergy: 
man, nor legal critic, nor inscriber of tombstones, nor 
historian of general or local politics, would venture 
a word against this eminent person’s sincerity as a 
Christian, or respectability as a man, or integrity ag 
a judge, or courage and faithfulness as the often-tried 
representative of his political party. But, besides 
these cold, formal, and empty words of the chisel that 
inscribes, the voice that speaks, and the pen that 
writes, for the public eye and for distant time,— and 
which inevitably lose much of their truth and freedom 
by the fatal consciousness of so doing,— there were 
traditions about the ancestor, and private diurnal gos- 
sip about the Judge, remarkably accordant in their 
testimony. It is often instructive to take the wom- 
an’s, the private and domestic, view of a public man; 
nor can anything be more curious than the vast dis- 
crepancy between portraits intended for engraving and 
the pencil-sketches that pass from hand to hand be- 
hind the original’s back. 

For example: tradition affirmed that the Puritan 
had been greedy of wealth; the Judge, too, with all 
the show of liberal expenditure, was said to be as close- 
fisted as if his gripe were of iron. ‘The ancestor had 
clothed himself in a grim assumption of kindliness, a 
rough heartiness of word and manner, which most 
people took to be the genuine warmth of nature, 
making its way through the thick and inflexible hide 
of a manly character. His descendant, in compliance 
with the requirements of a nicer age, had etherealized 
this rude benevolence into that broad benignity of 
smile, wherewith he shone like a noonday sun along 
the streets, or glowed like a household fire in the 
drawing-rooms of his private acquaintance. The Pu 


THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY. 151 


ritan—if not belied by some singular stories, mur- 
- mured, even at this day, under the narrator’s breath 
— had fallen into certain transgressions to which men 
of his great animal development, whatever their faith 
or principles, must continue liable, until they put off 
impurity, along with the gross earthly substance that 
involves it. We must not stain our page with any 
contemporary scandal, to a similar purport, that may 
have been whispered against the Judge. The Puri- 
tan, again, an autocrat in his own household, had 
worn out three wives, and, merely by the remorseless 
weight and hardness of his character in the conjugal 
relation, had sent them, one after another, broken- 
hearted, to their graves. Here the parallel, in some 
sort, fails. The Judge had wedded but a single wife, 
and lost her in the third or fourth year of their mar- 
riage. There was a fable, however,—for such we 
choose to consider it, though, not impossibly, typical 
of Judge Pyncheon’s marital deportment, — that the 
lady got her death-blow in the honeymoon, and never 
smiled again, because her husband compelled her to 
serve him with coffee every morning at his bedside, in 
token of fealty to her liege-lord and master. 

But it is too fruitful a subject, this of hereditary 
resemblances,— the frequent recurrence of which, in a 
direct line, is truly unaccountable, when we consider 
how large an accumulation of ancestry lies behind 
every man at the distance of one or two centuries, 
We shall only add, therefore, that the Puritan — so, 
at least, says chimney-corner tradition, which often 
preserves traits of character with marvellous fidelity — 
was bold, imperious, relentless, crafty ; laying his pur- 
poses deep, and following them out with an inveteracy 
of pursuit that knew neither rest nor conscience. 


152 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


trampling on the weak, and, when essential to his ends, 
doing his utmost to beat down the strong. Whether 
the Judge in any degree resembled him the further 
progress of our narrative may show. 

Scarcely any of the items in the above-drawn par- 
allel occurred to Phcebe, whose country birth and res- 
idence, in truth, had left her pitifully ignorant of most 
of the family traditions, which lingered, like cobwebs 
and incrustations of smoke, about the rooms and chim- 
ney-corners of the House of the Seven Gables. Yet 
there was a circumstance, very trifling in itself, which 
impressed her with an odd degree of horror. She had 
heard of the anathema flung by Maule, the executed 
wizard, against Colonel Pyncheon and his posterity, 
— that God would give them blood to drink, — and 
likewise of the popular notion, that this miraculous 
blood might now and then be heard gurgling in their 
throats. The latter scandal —as became a person of 
sense, and, more especially, a member of the Pyncheon 
family —- Pheebe had set down for the absurdity which 
it unquestionably was. But ancient superstitions, after 
being steeped in human hearts and embodied in human 
breath, and passing from lip to ear in manifold rep- 
etition, through a series of generations, become im- 
bued with an effect of homely truth. The smoke of 
the domestic hearth has scented them through and 
through. By long transmission among household 
facts, they grow to look like them, and have such a 
familiar way of making themselves at home that their 
influence is usually greater than we suspect. Thus it 
happened, that when Pheebe heard a certain noise in 
Judge Pyncheon’s throat, — rather habitual with him, 
not altogether voluntary, yet indicative of nothing, un- 
less it were a slight bronchial complaint, or, as some 


THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY. 153 


people hinted, an apoplectic symptom, — when the 
girl heard this queer and awkward ingurgitation 
(which the writer never did hear, and therefore can- 
not describe), she, very foolishly, started, and clasped 
her hands. 

Of course, it was exceedingly ridiculous in Phebe to 
be discomposed by such a trifle, and still more unpar- 
donable to show her discomposure to the individual 
most concerned in it. But the incident chimed in so 
oddly with her previous fancies about the Colonel and 
the Judge, that, for the moment, it seemed quite to 
mingle their identity. 

“‘ What is the matter with you, young woman?” 
said Judge Pyncheon, giving her one of his harsh 
looks. ‘Are you afraid of anything?” 

“Oh, nothing, sir, — nothing in the world!” an- 
swered Phebe, with a little laugh of vexation at her- 
self. ‘ But perhaps you wish to speak with my cousin 
Hepzibah. Shall I call her?” 

“Stay a moment, if you please,” said the Judge, 
again beaming sunshine out of his face. ‘ You seem. 
to be a little nervous this morning. The town air, 
Cousin Pheebe, does not agree with your good, whole- 
some country habits. Or has anything happened to 
disturb you? — anything remarkable in Cousin Hep- 
zibah’s family? — An arrival, eh? I thought so! 
No wonder you are out of sorts, my little cousin. To 
be an inmate with such a guest may well startle an 
innocent young girl!” 

“You quite puzzle me, sir,” replied Phebe, gazing 
inquiringly at the Judge. “There is no frightful 
guest in the house, but only a poor, gentle, childlike 
man, whom I believe to be Cousin Hepzibah’s brother. 
\ am afraid (but you, sir, will know better than I) 


{54 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


that he is not quite in his sound senses; but so mild 
and quiet he seems to be, that a mother might trust 
her baby with him; and I think he would play with 
the baby as if he were only a few years older than it- 
self. He startle me! — Oh, no indeed! ” 

“‘] rejoice to hear so favorable and so ingenuous an 
account of my cousin Clifford,” said the benevolent 
Judge. ‘“ Many years ago, when we were boys and 
young men together, I had a great affection for him, 
and still feel a tender interest in all his concerns, 
You, say, Cousin Phebe, he appears to be weak- 
minded. Heaven grant him at least enough of intel- 
lect to repent of his past sins!” 

“Nobody, I fancy,” observed Phoebe, “can have 
fewer to repent of.” 

“And is it possible, my dear,” rejoined the Judge, 
with a commiserating look, “that you have never 
heard of Clifford Pyncheon ?— that you know noth- 
ing of his history? Well, it is all right; and your 
mother has shown a very proper regard for the good 
name of the family with which she connected herself. 
Believe the best you can of this unfortunate person, 
and hope the best! It is a rule which Christians 
should always follow, in their judgments of one an- 
other ; and especially is it right and wise among near 
relatives, whose characters have necessarily a degree 
of mutual dependence. But is Clifford in the parlor? 
I will just step in and see.” 

“ Perhaps, sir, I had better call my cousin Hepzie 
bah,” said Phoebe; hardly knowing, however, whether 
she ought to obstruct the entrance of so affectionate a 
kinsman into the private regions of the house. ‘ Her 
brother seemed to be just falling asleep after break- 
fast; and I am sure she would not like him to be dis 
turbed. Pray sir, let me give her notice!” 


a 


THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY. 155 


But the Judge showed a singular determination to 
enter unannounced; and as Phcebe, with the vivacity 
of a person whose movements unconsciously answer to 
her thoughts, had stepped towards the door, he used 
little or no ceremony in putting her aside. 

** No, no, Miss Pheebe!”’ said Judge Pyncheon, in a 
voice as deep as a thunder-growl, and with a frown as 
black as the cloud whence it issues. “ Stay you here! 
I know the house, and know my cousin Hepzibah, and 
know her brother Clifford likewise! — nor need my 
little country cousin put herself to the trouble of an- 
nouncing me!” —/§in these latter words, by the by, 
there were symptoms of a change from his sudden 
harshness into his previous benignity of manner. “I 
am at home here, Phoebe, you must recollect, and you 
are the stranger. I will just step in, therefore, and 
see for myself how Clifford is, and assure him and 
Hepzibah of my kindly feelings and best wishes. It 
is right, at this juncture, that they should both hear 
from my own lips how much I desire to serve them. 
Ha! here is Hepzibah herself!” 

Such was the case. The vibrations of the Judge’s 
voice had reached the old gentlewoman in the parlor, 
where she sat, with face averted, waiting on her 
brother’s slumber. She now issued forth, as would 
appear, to defend the entrance, looking, we must 
needs say, amazingly like the dragon which, in fairy 
tales, is wont to be the guardian over an enchanted 
beauty. The habitual scowl of her brow was, undeni- 
ably, too fierce, at this moment, to pass itself off on 
the innocent score of near-sightedness; and it was 
bent on Judge Pyncheon in a way that seemed to con- 
found, if not alarm him, so inadequately had he esti- 
uated the moral force of a deeply grounded antipathy. 


156 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


She made a repelling gesture with her hand, and 
stood a perfect picture of prohibition, at full length, 
in the dark frame of the doorway. But we must be- 
tray Hepzibah’s secret, and confess that the native 
timorousness of her character even now developed 
itself in a quick tremor, which, to her own perception, 
set each of her joints at variance with its fellows. 

Possibly, the Judge was aware how little true hardi- 
hood lay behind Hepzibah’s formidable front. At any 
rate, being a gentleman of steady nerves, he soon re- 
covered himself, and failed not to approach his cousin 
with outstretched hand ; adopting the sensible precau- 
tion, however, to cover his advance with a smile, so 
broad and sultry, that, had it been only half as warm 
as it looked, a trellis of grapes might at once have 
turned purple under its summer-like exposure. It 
may have been his purpose, indeed, to melt poor Hep- 
zibah on the spot, as if she were a figure of yellow 
wax. 

‘“‘Hepzibah, my beloved cousin, I am rejoiced!” 
exclaimed the Judge, most emphatically. ‘Now, at 
length, you have something to live for. Yes, and all 
of us, let me say, your friends and kindred, have more 
to live for than we had yesterday. I have lost no time 
im hastening to offer any assistance in my power 
towards making Clifford comfortable. He belongs to 
us all. I know how much he requires, —how much 
he used to require,—with his delicate taste, and 
his love of the beautiful. Anything in my house, — 
pictures, books, wine, luxuries of the table, — he may 
command them all! It would afford me most heart- 
felt gratification to see him! Shall I step in, this 
moment ?”’ 

“No,” replied Hepzibah, her voice quivering toe 


THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY. 15? 


painfully to allow of many words. “He cannot see 
visitors !”” 

“A visitor, my dear cousin !—do you call me so?” 
cried the Judge, whose sensibility, it seems, was hurt 
by the coldness of the phrase. ‘Nay, then, let me be 
Clifford’s host, and your own likewise. Come at once 
to my house. The country air, and all the conven- 
iences —I may say luxuries —that I have gathered 
about me, will do wonders for him. And you and I, 
dear Hepzibah, will consult together, and watch to- 
gether, and labor together, to make our dear Clifford 
happy. Come! why should we make more words 
about what is both a duty and a pleasure on my part? 
Come to me at once!” 

On hearing these so hospitable offers, and such gen- 
erous recognition of the claims of kindred, Phoebe felt 
very much in the mood of running up to Judge Pyn- 
cheon, and giving him, of her own accord, the kiss 
from which she had so recently shrunk away. It was 
quite otherwise with Hepzibah; the Judge’s smile 
seemed to operate on her acerbity of heart like sun- 
shine upon vinegar, making it ten times sourer than 
ever. 

“Clifford,” said she,—still too agitated to utter 
more than an abrupt sentence, — “Clifford has a 
home here!” 

‘May Heaven forgive you, Hepzibah,” said Judge 
Pyncheon, — reverently lifting his eyes towards that 
high court of equity to which he appealed, — “if you 
suffer any ancient prejudice or animosity to weigh with 
you in this matter! I stand here with an open heart, 
willing and anxious to receive yourself and Clifford 
into it. Do not refuse my good offices, — my earnest 
propositions for your welfare! They are such, in all 


158 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


respects, as it behooves your nearest kinsman to make, 
It will be a heavy responsibility, cousin, if you confine 
your brother to this dismal house and stifled air, when 
the delightful freedom of my country -seat is at his 
command.” 

“Tt would never suit Clifford,” said Hepzibah, as 
briefly as before. 

‘ Woman!” broke forth the Judge, giving way to 
his resentment, “ what is the meaning of all this? 
Have you other resources? Nay, I suspected as 
much! ‘Take care, Hepzibah, take care! Clifford is 
on the brink of as black a ruin as ever befell him 
yet! But why do I talk with you, woman as you 
are? Make way! —TI must see Clifford!” 

Hepzibah spread out her gaunt figure across the 
door, and seemed really to increase in bulk; looking 
the more terrible, also, because there was so much ter- 
ror and agitation in her heart. But Judge Pyncheon’s 
evident purpose of forcing a passage was interrupted 
by a voice from the inner room; a weak, tremulous, 
wailing voice, indicating helpless alarm, with no more 
energy for self-defence than belongs to a frightened 
infant. 

‘“‘ Hepzibah, Hepzibah!” cried the voice; “ go down 
on your knees to him! Kiss his feet! Entreat him 
not to come in! Qh, let him have mercy on me! 
Mercy !— mercy!” 

For the instant, it appeared doubtful whether it 
were not the Judge’s resolute purpose to set Hepzibah 
aside, and step across the threshold into the parlor, 
whence issued that broken and miserable murmur of 
entreaty. It was not pity that restrained him, for, at 
the first sound of the enfeebled voice, a red fire kin- 
dled in his eyes, and he made a quick pace forward. 


THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY. 159 


with something inexpressibly fierce and grim darken- 
ing forth, as it were, out of the whele man. To know 
Judge Pyncheon, was to see him at that moment. 
After such a revelation, let him smile with what sul- 
triness he would, he could much sooner turn grapes 
purple, or pumpkins yellow, than melt the iron 
branded impression out of the beholder’s memory. 
And it rendered his aspect not the less, but more 
frightful, that it seemed not to express wrath or 
hatred, but a certain hot fellness of purpose, which 
annihilated everything but itself. 

Yet, after all, are we not slandering an excellent 
and amiable man? Look at the Judge now! He is 
apparently conscious of having erred, in too energeti- 
cally pressing his deeds of loving-kindness on persons 
unable to appreciate them. He will await their better 
mood, and hold himself as ready to assist them then 
as at this moment. As he draws back from the door, 
an all-comprehensive benignity blazes from his visage, 
indicating that he gathers Hepzibah, little Phoebe, and 
the invisible Clifford, all three, together with the 
whole world besides, into his immense heart, and 
gives them a warm bath in its flood of affection. 

“ You do me great wrong, dear Cousin Hepzibah!” 
said he, first kindly offering her his hand, and then 
drawing on his glove preparatory to departure. ‘ Very 
great wrong! But I forgive it, and will study to make 
you think better of me. Of course, our poor Clifford 
being in so unhappy a state of mind, I cannot think 
of urging an interview at present. But I shall watch 
over his welfare as if he were my own beloved brother; 
nor do [ at all despair, my dear cousin, of constrain- 
ing both him and you to acknowledge your injustice. 
When that shall happen, I desire no other revenge 


160 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


than your acceptance of the best offices in my powez 
to do you.” 

With a bow to Hepzibah, and a degree of paternal 
benevolence in his parting nod to Phebe, the Judge 
left the shop, and went smiling along the street. As 
is customary with the rich, when they aim at the honors 
of a republic, he apologized, as it were, to the people, 
for his wealth, prosperity, and elevated station, by a 
free and hearty manner towards those who knew him; 
putting off the more of his dignity in due proportion 
with the humbleness of the man whom he saluted, and 
thereby proving a haughty consciousness of his advan- 
tages as irrefragably as if he had marched forth pre- 
ceded by a troop of lackeys to clear the way. On this 
particular forenoon so excessive was the warmth of 
Judge Pyncheon’s kindly aspect, that (such, at least, 
was the rumor about town) an extra passage of the 
water-carts was found essential, in order to lay the 
dust occasioned by so much extra sunshine! 

No sooner had he disappeared than Hepzibah grew 
deadly white, and, staggering towards Pheebe, let her 
head fall on the young girl’s shoulder. 

“© Phebe!” murmured she, ‘ that man has been 
the horror of my life! Shall I never, never have the 
courage, — will my voice never cease from trembling 
long enough to let me tell him what he is?” 

“‘ Ts he so very wicked?” asked Phebe. “ Yet his 
offers were surely kind!” 

* Do not speak of them, — he has a heart of iron!” 
rejoined Hepzibah. ‘ Go, now, and talk to Clifford ! 
Amuse and keep him quiet! It would disturb him 
wretchedly to see me so agitated as am. There, go, 
dear child, and I will try to look after the shop.” 

Phebe went, accordingly, but perplexed herself, 


THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY. 1612 


meanwhile, with queries as to the purport of the 
scene which she had just witnessed, and also whether 
judges, clergymen, and other characters of that emi- 
nent stamp and respectability, could really, in any sin. 
gle instance, be otherwise than just and upright men. 
A doubt of this nature has a most disturbing influ. 
ence, and, if shown to be a fact, comes with fearful 
and startling effect on minds of the trim, orderly, 
and limit-loving class, in which we find our little 
country-girl. Dispositions more boldly speculative 
may derive a stern enjoyment from the discovery, 
since there must be evil in the world, that a high 
man is as likely to grasp his share of it as a low one. 
A wider scope of view, and a deeper insight, may see 
rank, dignity, and station, all proved illusory, so far 
as regards their claim to human reverence, and yet 
not feel as if the universe were thereby tumbled head- 
long into chaos. But Phebe, in order to keep the 
universe in its old place, was fain to smother, in some 
degree, her own intuitions as to Judge Pyncheon’s 
character. And as for her cousin’s testimony in dis- 
paragement of it, she concluded that Hepzibah’s judg- 
ment was imbittered by one of those family feuds, 
which render hatred the more deadly by the dead and 
corrupted love that they intermingle with its rotivr 
poison. 


VOL. IIL i 


IX, 
CLIFFORD AND PH@BE. 


TRULY was there something high, generous, and 
noble in the native composition of our poor old Hep. 
zibah! Or else, —and it was quite as probably the 
case, —she had been enriched by poverty, developed 
by sorrow, elevated by the strong and solitary affec- 
tion of her life, and thus endowed with heroism, which 
never could have characterized her in what are called 
happier circumstances. Through dreary years Hep- 
zibah had looked forward — for the most part de- 
spairingly, never with any confidence of hope, but al- 
ways with the feeling that it was her brightest possi- 
bility — to the very position in which she now found 
herself. In her own behalf, she had asked nothing 
of Providence but the opportunity of devoting herself 
to this brother, whom she had so loved, —so admired 
for what he was, or might have been, — and to whom 
she had kept her faith, alone of all the world, wholly, 
unfalteringly, at every instant, and throughout life. 
And here, in his late decline, the lost one had come 
back out of his long and strange misfortune, and was 
_ thrown on her sympathy, as it seemed, not merely for 
the bread of his physical existence, but for everything 
that should keep him morally alive. She had re- 
sponded to the call. She had come forward,— our 
poor, gaunt Hepzibah, in her rusty silks, with her 
rigid joints, and the sad perversity of her scowl, ~ 














SHE UNLOCKED A BOOKCASE, AND TOOK DOWN 
SEVERAL BOOKS THAT HAD BEEN EXCELLENT 
READING IN THEIR DAY 





5 . d 
ati} ; = 7 
i ep ea} 
of AM 
na ¥ ‘i J 





CLIFFORD AND PHQBE. 163 


ready to do her utmost; and with affection enough, if 
that were all, to do a hundred times as much! There 
could be few more tearful sights, — and Heaven for. 
give us if a smile insist on mingling with our concep- 
tion of it! — few sights with truer pathos in them, 
than Hepzibah presented on that first afternoon. 

How patiently did she endeavor to wrap Clifford up 
in her great, warm love, and make it all the world ta 
him, so that he should retain no torturing sense of the 
coldness and dreariness without! Her little efforts to 
amuse him! How pitiful, yet magnanimous, they were! 

Remembering his early love of poetry and fiction, 
she unlocked a bookcase, and took down several books 
that had been excellent reading in their day. There 
was a volume of Pope, with the Rape of the Lock in 
it, and another of the Tatler, and an odd one of Dry- 
den’s Miscellanies, all with tarnished gilding on their 
covers, and thoughts of tarnished brilliancy inside. 
They had no success with Clifford. These, and all 
such writers of society, whose new works glow like the 
rich texture of a just-woven carpet, must be content to 
relinquish their charm, for every reader, after an age or 
two, and could hardly be supposed to retain any por: 
tion of it for a mind that had utterly lost its estimate of 
modes and manners. Hepzibah then took up Rasselas, 
and began to read of the Happy Valley, with a vague 
idea that some secret of a contented life had there been 
elaborated, which might at least serve Clifford and her- 
self for this one day. But the Happy Valley had a 
cloud over it. Hepzibah troubled her auditor, more 
over, by innumerable sins of emphasis, which he 
seemed to detect, without any reference to the mean- 
mg; nor, in fact, did he appear to take much note of 
the sense of whac she read, but evidently felt the tedium 


164 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


of the lecture, without harvesting its profit. His sis 
ter’s voice, too, naturally harsh, had, in the course of 
her sorrowful lifetime, contracted a kind of croak, 
which, when it once gets into the human throat, is as 
ineradicable as sin. In both sexes, occasionally, this 
life-long croak, accompanying each word of joy or sor- 
row, is one of the symptoms of a settled melancholy ; 
and wherever it occurs, the whole history of misfortune 
is conveyed in its slightest accent. The effect is as if 
the voice had been dyed black ; or, —if we must use a 
more moderate simile, —this miserable croak, running 
through all the variations of the voice, is like a black 
silken thread, on which the crystal beads of speech are 
strung, and whence they take their hue. Such voices 
have put on mourning for dead hopes; and they ought 
to die and be buried along with them! 

Discerning that Clifford was not gladdened by her ef- 
forts, Hepzibah searched about the house for the means 
of more exhilarating pastime. At one time, her eyes 
chanced to rest on Alice Pyncheon’s harpsichord. It 
was a moment of great peril ; for, — despite the tradi- 
tionary awe that had gathered over this instrument of 
music, and the dirges which spiritual fingers were said 
to play on it, — the devoted sister had solemn thoughts 
of thrumming on its chords for Clifford’s benefit, and 
accompanying the performance with her voice. Poor 
Clifford! Poor Hepzibah! Poor harpsichord! AI 
three would have been miserable together. By some 
good agency, — possibly, by the unrecognized interpo- 
sition of the long-buried Alice herself, — the threaten. 
ing calamity was averted. 

But the worst of all— the hardest stroke of fate for 
Hepzibah to endure, and perhaps for Clifford too — 
was his invincible distaste for her appearance. Her 


CLIFFORD AND PHGBE. 165 


features, never the most agreeable, and now harsh with 
age and grief, and resentment against the world for his 
sake ; her dress, and especially her turban; the queer 
and quaint manners, which had unconsciously grown 
upon her in solitude, —such being the poor gentle- 
woman’s outward characteristics, it is no great marvel, 
although the mournfullest of pities, that the instinctive 
lover of the Beautiful was fain to turn away his eyes. 
There was no help for it. It would be the latest im- 
pulse to die within him. In his last extremity, the ex- 
piring breath stealing faintly through Clifford’s lips, 
he would doubtless press Hepzibah’s hand, in fervent 
recognition of all her lavished love, and close his eyes, 
— but not so much to die, as to be constrained to look 
no longer on her face! Poor Hepzibah! She took 
counsel with herself what might be done, and thought 
of putting ribbons on her turban ; but, by the instant 
rush of several guardian angels, was withheld from an 
experiment that could hardly have proved less than 
fatal to the beloved object of her anxiety. 

To be brief, besides Hepzibah’s disadvantages of per- 
son, there was an uncouthness pervading all her deeds; 
a clumsy something, that could but ill adapt itself for 
use, and not at all for ornament. She was a grief to 
Clifford, and she knew it. In this extremity, the anti- 
quated virgin turned to Phebe. No grovelling jeal- 
ousy was in her heart. Had it pleased Heaven to 
crown the heroic fidelity of her life by making her per. 
sonally the medium of Clifford’s happiness, it would 
have rewarded her for all the past, by a joy with no 
bright tints, indeed, but deep and true, and worth a 
thousand gayer ecstasies. This could not be. She 
therefore turned to Phebe, and resigned the task into 
the young girl’s hands. The latter took it up cheer 


166 THE HQUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


fully, as she did everything, but with no sense of a 
mission to perform, and succeeding all the better fox 
that same simplicity. 

By the involuntary effect of a genial temperament, 
Pheebe soon grew to be absolutely essential to the daily 
comfort, if not the daily life, of her two forlorn com 
panions. The grime and sordidness of the House of 
the Seven Gables seemed to have vanished since her 
appearance there; the gnawing tooth of the dry-rot was 
stayed among the old timbers of its skeleton frame; 
the dust had ceased to settle down so densely, from the 
antique ceilings, upon the floors and furniture of the: 
rooms below,—or, at any rate, there was a little 
housewife, as light-footed as the breeze that sweeps a 
garden walk, gliding hither and thither to brush it all 
away. The shadows of gloomy events that haunted 
the else lonely and desolate apartments; the heavy, 
breathless scent which death had left in more than one 
of the bedchambers, ever since his visits of long ago, 
— these were less powerful than the purifying influence 
scattered throughout the atmosphere of the household 
by the presence of one youthful, fresh, and thoroughly 
wholesome heart. There was no morbidness in Phebe; 
if there had been, the old Pyncheon House was the 
very locality to ripen it into incurable disease. But 
now her spirit resembled, in its potency, a minute 
quantity of ottar of rose in one of Hepzibah’s huge, 
iron-bound trunks, diffusing its fragrance through the 
various articles of linen and wrought-lace, kerchiefs, 
caps, stockings, folded dresses, gloves, and whatever 
else was treasured there. As every article in the great 
trunk was the sweeter for the rose-scent, so did all the 
thoughts and emotions of Hepzibah and Clifford, som- 
bre as they might seem, acquire a subtle attribute of 


CLIFFORD AND PHQBE. 167 


happiness from Phcebe’s intermixture with them. Her 
activity of body, intellect, and heart impelled her con- 
tinually to perform the ordinary little toils that offered 
themselves around her, and to think the thought proper 
for the moment, and to sympathize, — now with the 
twittering gayety of the robins in the pear-tree, and 
now to such a depth as she could with Hepzibah’s dark 
anxiety, or the vague moan of her brother. This fac- 
ile adaptation was at once the symptom of perfect 
health and its best preservative. 

A nature like Phcebe’s has invariably its due in: 
fluence, but is seldom regarded with due honor. It 
spiritual force, however, may be partially estimated by 
the fact of her having found a place for herself, amid 
circumstances so stern as those which surrounded the 
mistress of the house ; and also by the effect which 
she produced on a character of so much more mass 
than her own. For the gaunt, bony frame and limbs 
of Hepzibah, as compared with the tiny lightsomeness 
of Pheebe’s figure, were perhaps in some fit proportion 
with the moral weight and substance, respectively, of 
the woman and the girl. 

To the guest, — to Hepzibah’s brother, — or Cousin 
Clifford, as Phebe now began to call him, — she was 
especially necessary. Not that he could ever be said 
to converse with her, or often manifest, in any other 
very definite mode, his sense of a charm in her society. 
But if she were a long while absent he became pettish 
and nervously restless, pacing the room to and fro 
with the uncertainty that characterized all his move- 
ments; or else would sit broodingly in his great chair, 
resting his head on his hands, and evincing life only 
by an electric sparkle of ill-humor, whenever Hepzi- 
ban endeavored to arouse him. Pheebe’s presence, and 


168 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


the contiguity of her fresh life to his blighted one, was 
usually all that he required. Indeed, such was the 
native gush and play of her spirit, that she was seldom 
perfectly quiet and undemonstrative, any more than a 
fountain ever ceases to dimple and warble with its 
flow. She possessed the gift of song, and that, too, se 
naturally, that you would as little think of inquiring 
whence she had caught it, or what master had taught 
her, as of asking the same questions about a bird, in 
whose small strain of music we recognize the voice of 
the Creator as distinctly as in the loudest accents of 
his thunder. So long as Phebe sang, she might stray 
at her own will about the house. Clifford was content, 
whether the sweet, airy homeliness of her tones came 
down from the upper chambers, or along the passage- 
way from the shop, or was sprinkled through the foli- 
age of the pear-tree, inward from the garden, with the 
twinkling sunbeams. He would sit quietly, with a 
gentle pleasure gleaming over his face, brighter now, 
and now a little dimmer, as the song happened to float 
near him, or was more remotely heard. It pleased him 
best, however, when she sat on a low footstool at his 
knee. — 

It is perhaps remarkable, considering her tempera- 
ment, that Phoebe oftener chose a strain of pathos than 
of gayety. But the young and happy are not ill 
pleased to temper their life with a transparent shadow, 
The deepest pathos of Phcebe’s voice and song, more 
over, came sifted through the golden texture of @ 
cheery spirit, and was somehow so interfused with the 
quality thence acquired, that one’s heart felt all the 
lighter for having wept at it. Broad mirth, in the 
sacred presence of dark misfortune, would have jarred 
harshly and irreverently with the solemn symphony 





IT PLEASED HIM BEST, HOWEVER, WHEN SHE SAT ON A LOW 
FOOTSTOOL AT HIS KNEE 


170 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


Phebe, it is probable, had but a very imperfect 
comprehension of the character over which she had 
thrown so beneficent a spell. Nor was it necessary. 
The fire upon the hearth can gladden a whole semi. 
circle of faces round about it, but need not know the 
individuality of one among them all. ~Indeed, there 
was something too fine and delicate in Clifford’s traits 
to be perfectly appreciated by one whose sphere lay so 
much in the Actual as Phoebe’s did. For Clifford, 
however, the reality, and simplicity, and thorough 
homeliness of the girl’s nature, were as powerful a 
charm as any that she possessed. Beauty, it is true, 
and beauty almost perfect in its own style, was indis- 
pensable. Had Phcebe been coarse in feature, shaped 
clumsily, of a harsh voice, and uncouthly mannered, 
she might have been rich with all good gifts, beneath 
this unfortunate exterior, and still, so long as she wore 
the guise of woman, she would have shocked Clifford, 
and depressed him by her lack of beauty. But noth- 
ing more beautiful — nothing prettier, at least — was 
ever made than, Phcebe. And, therefore, to this man, 
— whose whole poor and impalpable enjoyment of ex- 
istence heretofore, and until both his heart and faney 
died within him, had been a dream, — whose images of 
women had more and more lost their warmth and sub- 
stance, and been frozen, like the pictures of secluded 
artists, into the chillest ideality, —to him, this little 
figure of the cheeriest household life was just what he 
required to bring him back into the breathing world. 
Persons who have wandered, or been expelled, out of 
the common track of things, even were it for a better 
system, desire nothing so much as to be led back. They 
shiver in their loneliness, be it on a mountain-top or 
ina dungeon. Now, Phebe’s presence made a home 


CLIFFORD AND PHQGBE. 171 


about her,—that very sphere which the outcast, the 
prisoner, the potentate, — the wretch beneath mankind, 
the wretch aside from it, or the wretch above it, — in- 
stinctively pines after, —a home! She was real! 
Holding her hand, you felt something ; a tender some- 
thing ; a substance, and a warm one: and so long as 
you should feel its grasp, soft as it was, you might be 
certain that your place was good in the whole sym- 
pathetic chain of human nature. The world was no 
longer a delusion. 

By looking a little further in this direction, we 
might suggest an explanation of an often-suggested 
mystery. Why are poets so apt to choose their mates, 
not for any similarity of poetic endowment, but for 
qualities which might make the happiness of the 
rudest handicraftsman as well as that of the ideal 
craftsman of the spirit? Because, probably, at his 
highest elevation, the poet needs no human inter- 
course; but he finds it dreary to descend, and be a 
stranger. 

There was something very beautiful in the relation 
that grew up between this pair, so closely and con- 
stantly linked together, yet with such a waste of 
gloomy and mysterious years from his birthday to 
hers. On Clifford’s part it was the feeling of a man 
naturally endowed with the liveliest sensibility to fem- 
inine influence, but who had never quaffed the cup of 
passionate love, and knew that it was now too late. 
He knew it, with the instinctive delicacy that had sur- 
vived his intellectual decay. Thus, his sentiment for 
Phebe, without being paternal, was not less chaste 
than if she had been his daughter. He was a man, it 
is true, and recognized her as a woman. She was his 


only representative of womankind. He took unfail 


172 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


ing note of every charm that appertained to her sex, 
and saw the ripeness of her lips, and the virginal de- 
velopment of her bosom. All her little womanly ways, 
budding out of her like blossoms on a young fruit- 
tree, had their effect on him, and sometimes caused 
his very heart to tingle with the keenest thrills of 
pleasure. At such moments, — for the effect was sel- 
dom more than momentary, — the half-torpid man 
would be full of harmonious life, just as a long-silent 
harp is full of sound, when the musician’s fingers 
sweep across it. But, after all, it seemed rather a 
perception, or a sympathy, than a sentiment belonging 
to himself as an individual. He read Pheebe, as he 
would a sweet and simple story ; he listened to her, as 
if she were a verse of household poetry, which God, 
in requital of his bleak and dismal lot, had permitted 
some angel, that most pitied him, to warble through 
the house. She was not an actual fact for him, but 
the interpretation of all that he had lacked on earth 
brought warmly home to his conception; so that this 
mere symbol, or lifelike picture, had almost the com- 
fort of reality. 

But we strive in vain to put the idea into words. 
No adequate expression of the beauty and profound 
pathos with which it impresses us is attainable. This 
being, made only for happiness, and heretofore so mis- 
erably failing to be happy, — his tendencies so hide- 
ously thwarted, that, some unknown time ago, the del- 
icate springs of his character, never morally or intel: 
lectually strong, had given way, and he was now 
imbecile, —this poor, forlorn, voyager from the Isl- 
ands of the Blest, in a frail bark, on a tempestuous 
sea, had been flung, by the last mountain-wave of his 
shipwreck, into a quiet harbor. There, as he lay more 


CLIFFORD AND PHBE. 178 


than half lifeless on the strand, the fragrance of an 
earthly rose-bud had come to his nostrils, and, as odors 
will, had summoned up reminiscences or visions of all 
the living and breathing beauty amid which he should 
have had his home. With his native susceptibility of 
happy influences, he inhales the slight, ethereal rap- 
ture into his soul, and expires ! 

And how did Phebe regard Clifford? The girl’s 
was not one of those natures which are most attracted 
by what is strange and exceptional in human charac- 
ter. The path which would best have suited her was 
the well-worn track of ordinary life; the companions 
in whom she would most have delighted were such as 
one encounters at every turn. The mystery which en- 
veloped Clifford, so far as it affected her at all, was an 
annoyance, rather than the piquant charm which many 
women might have found in it. Still, her native kind- 
liness was brought strongly into play, not by what was 
darkly picturesque in his situation, nor so much, even, 
by the finer graces of his character, as by the simple 
appeal of a heart so forlorn as his to one so full of 
genuine sympathy as hers. She gave him an affec- 
tionate regard, because he needed so much love, and 
seemed to have received so little. With a ready tact, 
the result of ever-active and wholesome sensibility, she 
discerned what was good for him, and did it. What- 
ever was morbid in his mind and experience she ig: 
nored ; and thereby kept their intercourse healthy, by 
the incautious, but, as it were, heaven-directed freedom 
of her whole conduct. The sick in mind, and, per. 
haps, in body, are rendered more darkly and hope: 
lessly so by the manifold reflection of their disease, 
mirrored back from all quarters in the deportment of 
those about them; they are compelled to inhale the 


174 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


poison of their own breath, in infinite repetition. But 
Phebe afforded her poor patient a supply of purer 
air. She impregnated it, too, not with a wild-flower 
scent, — for wildness was no trait of hers, — but with 
the perfume of garden-roses, pinks, and other blossoms 
of much sweetness, which nature and man have con- 
sented together in making grow from summer to sum- 
mer, and from century to century. Such a flower was 
Phebe, in her relation with Clifford, and such the de- 
light that he inhaled from her. 

Yet, it must be said, her petals sometimes drooped 
a little, in consequence of the heavy atmosphere 
about her. She grew more thoughtful than hereto- 
fore. Looking aside at Clifford’s face, and seeing the 
dim, unsatisfactory elegance and the intellect almost 
quenched, she would try to inquire what had been his 
life. Was he always thus? Had this veil been over 
him from his birth? — this veil, under which far more 
of his spirit was hidden than revealed, and through 
which he so imperfectly discerned the actual world, — 
or was its gray texture woven of some dark calamity? 
Pheebe loved no riddles, and would have been glad to 
escape the perplexity of this one. Nevertheless, there 
was so far a good result of her meditations on Clif- 
ford’s character, that, when her involuntary conjec- 
tures, together with the tendency of every strange cir- 
cumstance to tell its own story, had gradually taught 
her the fact, it had no terrible effect upon her. Let 
the world have done him what vast wrong it might, 
she knew Cousin Clifford too well — or fancied so — 
ever to shudder at the touch of his thin delicate fin. 
gers. 

Within a few days after the appearance of this re- 
markable inmate, the routine of life had established 


CLIFFORD AND PHGCBE. 175 


itself with a good deal of uniformity in the old house 
of our narrative. In the morning, very shortly after 
breakfast, it was Clifford’s custom to fall asleep in 
his chair; nor, unless accidentally disturbed, would he 
emerge from a dense cloud of slumber or the thinner 
mists that flitted to and fro, until well towards noon- 
day. These hours of drowsihead were the season of the 
old gentlewoman’s attendance on her brother, while 
Pheebe took charge of the shop; an arrangement 
which the public speedily understood, and evinced 
their decided preference of the younger shopwoman by 
the multiplicity of their calls during her administra- 
tion of affairs. Dinner over, Hepzibah took her knit- 
ting-work, —a long stocking of gray yarn, for her 
brother’s winter-wear, — and with a sigh, and a scowl 
of affectionate farewell to Clifford, and a gesture en- 
joining watchfulness on Phebe, went to take her seat 
behind the counter. It was now the young girl’s turn 
to be the nurse, —the guardian, the playmate, — or 
whatever is the fitter phrase, — of the gray-haired 
man. 


1 & 
THE PYNCHEON GARDEN. 


CLIFFORD, except for Phcebe’s more active insti 
gation, would ordinarily have yielded to the torpo: 
which had crept through all his modes of being, and 
which sluggishly counselled him to sit in his morning 
chair till eventide. But the girl seldom failed to pro- 
pose a removal to the garden, where Uncle Venner 
and the daguerreotypist had made such repairs on the 
roof of the ruinous arbor, or summer-house, that it was 
now a sufficient shelter from sunshine and casual 
showers. ‘The hop-vine, too, had begun to grow luxu- 
riantly over the sides of the little edifice, and made an 
interior of verdant seclusion, with innumerable peeps 
and glimpses into the wider solitude of the garden. 

Here, sometimes, in this green play-place of flick- 
ering light, Phcebe read to Clifford. Her acquaint- 
ance, the artist, who appeared to have a literary turn, 
had supplied her with works of fiction, in pamphlet- 
form, and a few volumes of poetry, in altogether a dif- 
ferent style and taste from those which Hepzibah see 
lected for his amusement. Small thanks were due 
to the books, however, if the girl’s readings were in 
9ay degree more successful than her elderly cousin’s. 
Pheebe’s voice had always a pretty music in it, and 
sould either enliven Clifford by its sparkle and gayety 
of tone, or soothe him by a continued flow of pebbly 
and brook-like cadences. But the fictions—in which 


THE PYNCHEON GARDEN. 177 


the country-girl, unused to works of that nature, often 
became deeply absorbed — interested her strange audi- 
tor very little, or not at all. Pictures of life, scenes 
of passion or sentiment, wit, humor, and pathos, were 
all thrown away, or worse than thrown away, on Clif- 
ford ; either because he lacked an experience by which 
to test their truth, or because his own griefs were a 
touch-stone of reality that few feigned emotions could 
withstand. When Phebe broke into a peal of merry 
laughter at what she read, he would now and then 
laugh for sympathy, but oftener respond with a 
troubled, questioning look. If a tear—a maiden’s 
sunshiny tear over imaginary woe—dropped upon 
some melancholy page, Clifford either took it as a 
token of actual calamity, or else grew peevish, and 
angrily motioned her to close the volume. And 
wisely too! Is not the world sad enough, in genuine 
earnest, without making a pastime of mock-sorrows? 

With poetry it was rather better. He delighted in 
the swell and subsidence of the rhythm, and the hap- 
pily recurring rhyme. Nor was Clifford incapable of 
feeling the sentiment of poetry, — not, perhaps, where 
it was highest or deepest, but where it was most flit- 
ting and ethereal. It was impossible to foretell in 
what exquisite verse the awakening spell might lurk; 
but, on raising her eyes from the page to Clifford’s 
face, Phoebe would be made aware, by the light break- 
ing through it, that a more delicate intelligence than 
her own had caught a lambent flame from what she 
read. One glow of this kind, however, was often the 
precursor of gloom for many hours afterward; be- 
cause, when the glow left him, he seemed conscious of 
@ missing sense and power, and groped about for them, 
as if a blind man should go seeking his lost eyesight. 


VOL. III. 12 


178 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


It pleased him more, and was better for his inward | 
welfare, that Phoebe should talk, and make passing 
occurrences vivid to his mind by her accompanying de- 
scription and remarks. The life of the garden offered 
topics enough for such discourse as suited Clifford 
best. He never failed to inquire what flowers had 
bloomed since yesterday. His feeling for flowers was 
very exquisite, and seemed not so much a taste as an 
emotion ; he was fond of sitting with one in his hand, 
intently observing it, and looking from its petals into 
Pheebe’s face, as if the garden flower were the sister 
of the household maiden. Not merely was there a de- 
light in the flower’s perfume, or pleasure in its beauti- 
ful form, and the delicacy or brightness of its hue; 
but Clifford’s enjoyment was accompanied with a 
perception of life, character, and individuality, that 
made him love these blossoms of the garden, as if they 
were endowed with sentiment and intelligence. This 
affection and sympathy for flowers is almost exclu- 
sively a woman’s trait. Men, if endowed with it by 
nature, soon lose, forget, and learn to despise it, in 
their contact with coarser things than flowers. Clif- 
ford, too, had long forgotten it; but found it again 
now, as he slowly revived from the chill torpor of his 
life. 

It is wonderful how many pleasant incidents contin- 
ually came to pass in that secluded garden-spot when 
once Phebe had set herself to look for them. She 
had seen or heard a bee there, on the first day of her 
acquaintance with the place. And often, — almost 
continually, indeed, — since then, the bees kept com- 
ing thither, Heaven knows why, or by what pertina- 
cious desire, for far-fetched sweets, when, no doubt, 


there were broad clover-fields, and all kinds of garden 


THE PYNCHEON GARDEN. 179 


growth, much nearer home than this. Thither the 
bees came, however, and plunged into the squash-blos- 
soms, as if there were no other squash-vines within a 
long day’s flight, or as if the soil of Hepzibah’s gar- 
den gave its productions just the very quality which 
these laborious little wizards wanted, in order to im- 
part the Hymettus odor to their whole hive of New 
England honey. When Clifford heard their sunny, 
buzzing murmur, in the heart of the great yellow blos- 
soms, he looked about him with a joyful sense of 
warmth, and blue sky, and green grass, and of God’s 
free air in the whole height from earth to heaven. 
After all, there need be no question why the bees 
came to that one green nook in the dusty town. God 
sent them thither to gladden our poor Clifford. They 
brought the rich summer with them, in requital of a 
little honey. 

When the bean-vines began to flower on the poles, 
there was one particular variety which bore a vivid 
scarlet blossom. The daguerreotypist had found these 
beans in a garret, over one of the seven gables, treas- 
ured up in an old chest of drawers, by some horticul- 
tural Pyncheon of days gone by, who, doubtless, meant 
to sow them the next summer, but was himself first 
sown in Death’s garden-ground. By way of testing 
whether there were still a living germ in such ancient 
seeds, Holgrave had planted some of them; and the 
result of his experiment was a splendid row of bean- 
vines, clambering, early, to the full height of the 
poles, and arraying them, from top to bottom, in a 
spiral profusion of red blossoms. And, ever since 
the unfolding of the first bud, a multitude of hum- 
ming-birds had been attracted thither. At times, it 
seemed as if for every one of the hundred blossoms 


180 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


there was one of these tiniest fowls of the air, —a 
thumb’s bigness of burnished plumage, hovering and 
vibrating about the bean-poles. It was with indescrib- 
able interest, and even more than childish delight, 
that Clifford watched the humming-birds. He used 
to thrust his head softly out of the arbor to see them 
the better; all the while, too, motioning Phcebe to be 
quiet, and snatching glimpses of the smile upon her 
face, so as to heap his enjoyment up the higher with 
her sympathy. He had not merely grown young ; — 
he was a child again. 

Hepzibah, whenever she happened to witness one 
of these fits of miniature enthusiasm, would shake her 
head, with a strange mingling of the mother and sis- 
ter, and of pleasure and sadness, in her aspect. She 
said that it had always been thus with Clifford when 
the humming-birds came, — always, from his baby- 
hood, — and that his delight in them had been one 
of the earliest tokens by which he showed his love 
for beautiful things. And it was a wonderful coin- 
cidence, the good lady thought, that the artist should 
have planted these scarlet-flowering beans — which the 
humming-birds sought far and wide, and which had 
not grown in the Pyncheon garden before for forty 
years — on the very summer of Clifford’s return. 

Then would the tears stand in poor Hepzibah’s eyes, 
or overflow them with a too abundant gush, so that 
she was fain to betake herself into some corner lest 
Clifford should espy her agitation. Indeed, all the 
enjoyments of this period were provocative of tears. 
Coming so late as it did, it was a kind of Indian sum- 
mer, with a mist in its balmiest sunshine, and decay 
and death in its gaudiest delight. The more Clifford 
seemed to taste the happiness of a child, the sadder 


pS 5! 


Vid ‘ 





IT WAS WITH INDESCRIBABLE INTEREST, AND EVEN 
MORE THAN CHILDISH DELIGHT, THAT CLIFFORD 
WATCHED THE HUMMING-BIRDS 





THE PYNCHEON GARDEN. 18} 


was the difference to be recognized. With a myste- 
rious and terrible Past, which had annihilated his 
memory, and a blank Future before him, he had only 
this visionary and impalpable Now, which, if you once 
look closely at it, is nothing. He himself, as was per. 
ceptible by many symptoms, lay darkly behind his 
pleasure, and knew it to be a baby-play, which he was 
to toy and trifle with, instead of thoroughly believing. 
Clifford saw, it may be, in the mirror of his deeper 
consciousness, that he was an example and represen- 
tative of that great class of people whom an inexplica- 
ble Providence is continually putting at cross-purposes 
with the world: breaking what seems its own promise 
in their nature; withholding their proper food, and 
setting poison before them for a banquet; and thus 
—when it might so easily, as one would think, have 
been adjusted otherwise — making their existence a 
strangeness, a solitude, and torment. All his life long, 
he had been learning how to be wretched, as one 
learns a foreign tongue; and now, with the lesson 
thoroughly by heart, he could with difficulty compre- 
hend his little airy happiness. Frequently there was 
a dim shadow of doubt in his eyes. “Take my hand, 
Phebe,” he would say, “and pinch it hard with your 
little fingers! Give me a rose, that I may press its 
thorns, and prove myself awake by the sharp touch 
f pain!” Evidently, he desired this prick of a tri- 
ding anguish, in order to assure himself, by that qual- 
ity which he best knew to be real, that the garden, 
and the seven weather-beaten gables, and Hepzibah’s 
scowl, and Phebe’s smile, were real likewise. With- 
out this signet in his flesh, he could have attributed 
uo more substance to them than to the empty confu- 
sion of imaginary scenes with which he had fed his 
spirit, until even that poor sustenance was exhausted. — 


. 


182 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


The author needs great faith in his reader’s sym: 
pathy: else he must hesitate to give details so minute, 
and incidents apparently so trifling, as are essential 
to make up the idea of this garden-life. It was the 
Eden of a thunder-smitten Adam, who had fled for 
refuge thither out of the same dreary and perilous 
wilderness into which the original Adam was expelled. 

One of the available means of amusement, of which 
Phoebe made the most in Clifford’s behalf, was that 
feathered society, the hens, a breed of whom, as we 
have already said, was an immemorial heirloom in the 
Pyncheon family. In compliance with a whim of Clif- 
ford, as it troubled him to see them in confinement, 
they had been set at liberty, and now roamed at will 
about the garden ; doing some little mischief but hin- 
dered from escape by buildings on three sides, and 
the difficult peaks of a wooden fence on the other. 
They spent much of their abundant leisure on the 
margin of Maule’s well, which was haunted by a kind 
of snail, evidently a titbit to their palates; and the 
brackish water itself, however nauseous to the rest of 
the world, was so greatly esteemed by these fowls, 
that they might be seen tasting, turning up their 
heads, and smacking their bills, with precisely the 
air of wine-bibbers round a probationary cask. Their 
generally quiet, yet often brisk, and constantly diver. 
sified talk, one to another, or sometimes in soliloquy 
—as they scratched worms out of the rich, black 
soil, or pecked at such plants as suited their taste, — 
had such a domestic tone, that it was almost a won 
der why you could not establish a regular interchange 
of ideas about household matters, human and gallina- 
ceous. All hens are well worth studying for the piq- 
aancy and rich variety of their manners; but by ne 


THE PYNCHEON GARDEN. 183 


vossibility can there have been other fowls of such 
odd appearance and deportment as these ancestral 
ones. ‘They probably embodied the traditionary pe- 
culiarities of their whole line of progenitors, derived 
through an unbroken succession of eggs; or else this 
individual Chanticleer and his two wives had grown 
to be humorists, and a little crack-brained withal, on 
account of their solitary way of life, and out of sym- 
pathy for Hepzibah, their lady-patroness. 

Queer, indeed, they looked! Chanticleer himself, 
though stalking on two stilt-like legs, with the dignity 
of interminable descent in all his gestures, was hardly 
bigger than an ordinary partridge ; his two wives were 
about the size of quails; and as for the one chicken, it 
looked small enough to be still in the egg, and, at the 
same time, sufficiently old, withered, wizened, and ex- 
perienced, to have been the founder of the antiquated 
race. Instead of being the youngest of the family, it 
rather seemed to have aggregated into itself the ages, 
not only of these living specimens of the breed, but 
of all its forefathers and foremothers, whose united 
excellences and oddities were squeezed into its little 
body. Its mother evidently regarded it as the one 
chicken of the world, and as necessary, in fact, to the 
world’s continuance, or, at any rate, to the equilibrium 
of the present system of affairs, whether in church or 
state. No lesser sense of the infant fowl’s importance: 
could have justified, even in a mother’s eyes, the per- 
severance with which she watched over its safety, ruf- 
fling her small person to twice its proper size, and 
flying in everybody’s face that so much as looked to- 
wards her hopeful progeny. No lower estimate could 
have vindicated the indefatigable zeal with which she 
scratched, and her unscrupulousness in digging up the 


184 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


choicest flower or vegetable, for the sake of the fat 
earthworm at its root. Her nervous cluck, when the 
chicken happened to be hidden in the long grass or 
under the squash-leaves; her gentle croak of satisfac. 
tion, while sure of it beneath her wing; her note ox 
ill-concealed fear and obstreperous defiance, when she 
saw her arch-enemy, a neighbor’s cat, on the top of 
the high fence, — one or other of these sounds was 
to be heard at almost every moment of the day. By 
degrees, the observer came to feel nearly as much in- 
terest in this chicken of illustrious race as the mother- 
hen did. 

Pheebe, after getting well acquainted with the old 
hen, was sometimes permitted to take the chicken in 
her hand, which was quite capable of grasping its cu- 
bic inch or two of body. While she curiously examined 
its hereditary marks,—the peculiar speckle of its 
plumage, the funny tuft on its head, and a knob on 
each of its legs, — the little biped, as she insisted, kept 
giving her a sagacious wink. The daguerreotypist 
once whispered her that these marks betokened the 
oddities of the Pyncheon family, and that the chicken 
itself was a symbol of the life of the old house, em- 
bodying its interpretation, likewise, although an unin- 
telligible one, as such clews generally are. It was a 
feathered riddle; a mystery hatched out of an egg, 
and just as mysterious as if the egg had been addle! 

The second of Chanticleer’s two wives, ever since 
Pheebe’s arrival, had been in a state of heavy de- 
spondency, caused, as it afterwards appeared, by her 
inability to lay an egg. One day, however, by her 
self-important gait, the sideway turn of her head, and 
the cock of her eye, as she pried into one and anothet 
nook of the garden, — croaking to herself, all ths 


THE PYNCHEON GARDEN. 185 


while, with inexpressible complacency, — it was made 
svident that this identical hen, much as mankind un- 
dervalued her, carried something about her person the 
worth of which was not to be estimated either in gold 
or precious stones. Shortly after there was a prodig- 
ious cackling and gratulation of Chanticleer and all his 
family, including the wizened chicken, who appeared 
to understand the matter quite as well as did his sire, 
his mother, or his aunt. That afternoon Phoebe found 
a diminutive egg, — not in the regular nest, it was far 
too precious to be trusted there, — but cunningly hid- 
den under the currant-bushes, on some dry stalks of 
last year’s grass. Hepzibah, on learning the fact, 
took possession of the egg and appropriated it to Clif- 
ford’s breakfast, on account of a certain delicacy of 
flavor, for which, as she affirmed, these eggs had al- 
ways been famous. Thus unscrupulously did the old 
gentlewoman sacrifice the continuance, perhaps, of an 
ancient feathered race, with no better end than to sup- 
ply her brother with a dainty that hardly filled the 
bowl of a tea-spoon! It must have been in reference 
to this outrage that Chanticleer, the next day, accom- 
panied by the bereaved mother of the egg, took his 
post in front of Phcebe and Clifford, and delivered 
himself of a harangue that might have proved as long 
as his own pedigree, but for a fit of merriment on 
Phebe’s part. Hereupon, the offended fowl stalked 
away on his long stilts, and utterly withdrew his no- 
tice from Phebe and the rest of human nature, until 
she made her peace with an offering of spice-cake, 
which, next to snails, was the delicacy most in favor 
with his aristocratic taste. 

We linger too long, no doubt, beside this paltry rive 
ulet of life that flowed through the garden of the 


186 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


Pyncheon House. But we deem it pardonable to re 
cord these mean incidents and poor delights, because 
they proved so greatly to Clifford’s benefit. They 
had the earth-smell in them, and contributed to give 
him health and substance. Some of his occupations 
wrought less desirably upon him. He had a singular 
propensity, for example, to hang over Maule’s well, 
and look at the constantly shifting phantasmagoria of 
figures produced by the agitation of the water over 
the mosaic-work of colored pebbles at the bottom. He 
said that faces looked upward to him there,— beautiful 
faces, arrayed in bewitching smiles, — each moment- 
ary face so fair and rosy, and every smile so sunny, 
that he felt wronged at its departure, until the same 
tlitting witchcraft made a new one. But sometimes he 
would suddenly cry out, ‘ The dark face gazes at me!” 
and be miserable the whole day afterwards. Phebe, 
when she hung over the fountain by Clifford’s side, 
could see nothing of all this, — neither the beauty nor 
the ugliness, — but only the colored pebbles, looking 
as if the gush of the waters shook and disarranged 
them. And the dark face, that so troubled Clifford, 
was no more than the shadow thrown from a branch 
of one of the damson-trees, and breaking the inner 
light of Maule’s well. The truth was, however, that 
his fancy — reviving faster than his will and judg- 
ment, and always stronger than they — created shapes 
of loveliness that were symbolic of his native charac 
ter, and now and then a stern and dreadful shape that 
typified his fate. 

On Sundays, after Phebe had been at church, — 
for the girl had a church-going conscience, and would 
hardly have been at ease had she missed either prayer. 
tinging, sermon, or benediction, — after church-time 





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CHANTICLEER, THE NEXT DAY, ACCOMPANIED BY 
THE BEREAVED MOTHER OF THE EGG, TOOK HIS 
POST IN FRONT OF PHQ@BE AND CLIFFORD, AND 

DELIVERED HIMSELF OF A HARANGUE 





THE PYNCHEON GARDEN. 187 


therefore, there was, ordinarily, a sober little festival 
in the garden. In addition to Clifford, Hepzibah, and 
Phebe, two guests made up the company. One was 
the artist, Holgrave, who, in spite of his consociation 
with reformers, and his other queer and questionable 
traits, continued to hold an elevated place in Hepzi- 
bah’s regard. The other, we are almost ashamed tc 
say, was the venerable Uncle Venner, in a clean shirt. 
and a broadcloth coat, more respectable than his or. 
dinary wear, inasmuch as it was neatly patched on 
each elbow, and might be called an entire garment, 
except for a slight inequality in the length of its 
skirts. Clifford, on several occasions, had seemed to 
enjoy the old man’s intercourse, for the sake of his 
mellow, cheerful vein, which was like the sweet flavor 
of a frost-bitten apple, such as one picks up under the 
tree in December. A man at the very lowest point of 
the social scale was easier and more agreeable for the 
fallen gentleman to encounter than a person at any 
of the intermediate degrees ; and, moreover, as Clif- 
ford’s young manhood had been lost, he was fond of 
feeling himself comparatively youthful, now, in appo- 
sition with the patriarchal age of Uncle Venner. In 
fact, it was sometimes observable that Clifford half 
wilfully hid from himself the consciousness of being 
stricken in years, and cherished visions of an earthly 
future still before him; visions, however, too indis- 
tinctly drawn to be followed by disappointment —- 
though, doubtless, by depression — when any casual 
incident or recollection made him sensible of the with: 
ered leaf. 

So this oddly composed little social party used to as- 
semble under the ruinous arbor. Hepzibah — stately 
as ever at heart, and yielding not an inch of her old 


188 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


gentility, but resting upon it so much the more, as jus 
tifying a princess-like condescension — exhibited a not 
angraceful hospitality. She talked kindly to the va- 
grant artist, and took sage counsel — lady as she was 
— with the wood-sawyer, the messenger of everybody’s 
petty errands, the patched philosopher. And Uncle 
Venner, who had studied the world at street-corners, 
and other posts equally well adapted for just observa- 
tion, was as ready to give out his wisdom as a town- 
pump to give water. 

“Miss Hepzibah, ma’am,” said he once, after they 
had all been cheerful together, “I really enjoy these 
quiet little meetings of a Sabbath afternoon. They 
are very much like what I expect to have after I retire 
to my farm!” 

“Uncle Venner,” observed Clifford, in a drowsy, in- 
ward tone, “is always talking about his farm. But I 
have a better scheme for him, by and by. We shall 
see!” 

“ Ah, Mr. Clifford Pyncheon!” said the man of 
patches, “you may scheme for me as much as you 
please; but I’m not going to give up this one scheme 
of my own, even if I never bring it really to pass. It 
does seem to me that men make a wonderful mistake 
in trying to heap up property upon property. If I had 
done so, I should feel as if Providence was not bound 
to take care of me; and, at all events, the city would n’t 
be! I’m one of those people who think that infinity 
is big enough for us all — and eternity long enough.” 

“© Why, so they are, Uncle Venner,” remarked 
Phebe, after a pause; for she had been trying to 
fathom the profundity and appositeness of this con- 
cluding apothegm. ‘“ But for this short life of ours, 
one would like a house and a moderate garden-spot of 
one’s own.” 


THE PYNCHEON GARDEN. 189 


“It appears to me,” said the daguerreotypist, smil- 
ing, “ that Uncle Venner has the principles of Fourier 
at the bottom of his wisdom ; only they have not quite 
so much distinctness, in his mind as in that of the sys- 
tematizing Frenchman.” 

‘Come, Phebe,” said Hepzibah, “it is time to bring 
the currants.” 

And then, while the yellow richness of the declining 
sunshine still fell into the open space of the garden, 
Phebe brought out a loaf of bread and a china bowl of 
currants, freshly gathered from the bushes, and crushed 
with sugar. These, with water,— but not from the 
fountain of ill omen, close at hand, — constituted all 
the entertainment. Meanwhile, Holgrave took some 
pains to establish an intercourse with Clifford, actuated 
it might seem, entirely by an impulse of kindliness, in 
order that the present hour might be cheerfuller than 
most which the poor recluse had spent, or was destined 
yet to spend. Nevertheless, in the artist’s deep, 
thoughtful, all-observant eyes, there was, now and then, 
an expression, not sinister, but questionable ; as if he 
had some other interest in the scene than a stranger, a 
youthful and unconnected adventurer, might be sup- 
posed to have. With great mobility of outward mood, 
however, he applied himself to the task of enlivening 
the party ; and with so much success, that even dark- 
aued Hepzibah threw off one tint of melancholy, and 
made what shift she could with the remaining portion. 
Pheebe said to herself, — ‘“‘ How pleasant he can be!” 
As for Uncle Venner, as a mark of friendship and ap- 
probation, he readily consented to afford the young 
man his countenance in the way of his profession, — 
not metaphorically, be it understood, but literally, by 
allowing 9. daguerreotype of his face, so familiar to the 


190 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


town, to be exhibited at the entrance of Holgrave’s 
studio. 

Clifford, as the company partook of their little ban- 
quet, grew to be the gayest of them all. Hither it was 
one of those up-quivering flashes of the spirit, to which 
minds in an abnormal state are liable, or else the ar- 
tist had subtly touched some chord that made musical 
vibration. Indeed, what with the pleasant summer 
evening, and the sympathy of this little circle of not 
unkindly souls, it was perhaps natural that a character 
so susceptible as Clifford’s should become animated, 
and show itself readily responsive to what was said 
around him. But he gave out his own thoughts, like- 
wise, with an airy and fanciful glow; so that they glis- 
tened, as it were, through the arbor, and made their 
escape among the interstices of the foliage. He had 
been as cheerful, no doubt, while alone with Phebe, 
but never with such tokens of acute, although partial 
intelligence. 

But, as the sunlight left the peaks of the Seven Ga- 
bles, so did the excitement fade out of Clifford’s eyes. 
He gazed vaguely and mournfully about him, as if he 
missed something precious, and missed it the more 
drearily for not knowing precisely what it was. 

“IT want my happiness!” at last he murmured, 
hoarsely and indistinctly, hardly shaping out the words. 
“¢ Many, many years have I waited for it! It is late! 
Tt is late! I want my happiness!” 

Alas, poor Clifford! You are old, and worn with 
troubles that ought never to have befallen you. You 
are partly crazy and partly imbecile; a ruin, a failure, 
as almost everybody is, — though some in less degree, 
or less perceptibly, than their fellows. Fate has no 
happiness in store for you; unless your quiet home in 


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A CHINA BOWL OF CURRANTS, FRESHLY GATHERED 
FROM THE BUSHES 





THE PYNCHEON GARDEN. 191 
the old family residence with the faithful Hepzibah, 


and your long summer afternoons with Phcebe, and 
these Sabbath festivals with Uncle Venner and the 
daguerreotypist, deserve to be called happiness! Why 
not? If not the thing itself, it is marvellously like it, 
and the more so for that ethereal and intangible qual. 
ity which causes it all to vanish at too close an intro 
spection. Take it, therefore, while you may! Mur 
mur not. — question not, — but make the most of it! 


AL, 
THE ARCHED WINDOW. 


¥'rom the inertness, or what we may term the vege 
tative character, of his ordinary mood, Clifford would 
perhaps have been content to spend one day after an- 
other, interminably, — or, at least, throughout the 
summer-time, — in just the kind of life described in 
the preceding pages. Fancying, however, that it might 
be for his benefit occasionally to diversify the scene, 
Phcebe sometimes suggested that he should look out 
upon the life of the street. For this purpose, they 
used to mount the staircase together, to the second 
story of the house, where, at the termination of a wide 
entry, there was an arched window of uncommonly 
large dimensions, shaded by a pair of curtains. It 
opened above the porch, where there had formerly 
been a balcony, the balustrade of which had long since 
gone to decay, and been removed. At this arched 
window, throwing it open, but keeping himself in com- 
parative obscurity by means of the curtain, Clifford 
had an opportunity of witnessing such a portion of the 
great world’s movement as might be supposed to roll 
through one of the retired streets of a not very popu- 
lous city. But he and Phebe made a sight as well 
worth seeing as any that the city could exhibit. The 
pale, gray, childish, aged, melancholy, yet often simply 
cheerful, and sometimes delicately intelligent aspect 


ot Clifford, peering from behind the faded crimson of 


THE ARCHED WINDOW. 193 


the curtain, — watching the monotony of every-day 
occurrences with a kind of inconsequential interest and 
earnestness, and, at every petty throb of his sensibil- 
ity, turning for sympathy to the eyes of the bright 
young girl! 

If once he were fairly seated at the window, even 
Pyncheon Street would hardly be so dull and lonely 
but that, somewhere or other along its extent, Clifford 
might discover matter to occupy his eye, and titillate, 
if not engross, his observation. Things familiar to 
the youngest child that had begun its outlook at ex- 
istence seemed strange to him. A cab; an omnibus, 
with its populous interior, dropping. here and there a 
passenger, and picking up another, and thus typifying 
that. vast rolling vehicle, the world, the end of whose 
journey is everywhere and nowhere ; these objects he 
followed eagerly with his eyes, but forgot them before 
the dust raised by the horses and wheels had settled 
along their track. As regarded novelties (among 
which cabs and omnibuses were to be reckoned), his 
mind appeared to have lost its proper gripe and reten- 
tiveness. Twice or thrice, for example, during the 
sunny hours of the day, a water-cart went along by 
the Pyncheon House, leaving a broad wake of mois- 
tened earth, instead of the white dust that had risen 
at a lady’s lightest footfall; it was like a summer 
shower, which the city authorities had caught and 
tamed, and compelled it into the commonest routine 
of their convenience. With the water-cart Clifford 
could never grow familiar; it always affected him 
with just the same surprise as at first. His mind took 
an apparently sharp impression from it, but lost the 
recollection of this perambulatory shower, before its 


next reappearance, as completely as did the street it 
VOL 11. 13 


194 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


self, along which the heat so quickly strewed white 
dust again. It was the same with the railroad. Clif. 
ford could hear the obstreperous howl of the steam- 
devil, and, by leaning a little way from the arched 
window, could catch a glimpse of the trains of cars, 
flashing a brief transit across the extremity of the 
street. The idea of terrible energy thus forced upon 
him was new at every recurrence, and seemed to affect 
him as disagreeably, and with almost as much surprise, 
the hundredth time as the first. 

Nothing gives a sadder sense of decay than this losg 
or suspension of the power to deal with unaccustomed 
things, and to keep up with the swiftness of the pass- 
ing moment. It can merely be a suspended anima- 
tion ; for, were the power actually to perish, there 
would be little use of immortality. We are less than 
ghosts, for the time being, whenever this calamity be- 
falls us. 

Clifford was indeed the most inveterate of conserva- 
tives. All the antique fashions of the street were dear 
to him; even such as were characterized by a rude- 
ness that would naturally have annoyed his fastidious 
senses. He loved the old rumbling and _ jolting carts, 
the former track of which he still found in his long- 
buried remembrance, as the observer of to-day finds 
the wheel-tracks of ancient vehicles in Herculaneum. 
The butcher’s cart, with its snowy canopy, was an ac- 
ceptable object ; so was the fish-cart, heralded by its 
horn ; so, likewise, was the countryman’s cart of vege. 
tables, plodding from door to door, with long pauses 
of the patient horse, while his owner drove a trode in 
turnips, carrots, summer-squashes, string-beans, zreen 
peas, and new potatoes, with half the housewives of 


‘he neighborhood. The baker’s cart, with the harsh 


THE ARCHED WINDOW. 195 


music of its bells, had a pleasant effect on Clifford, be- 
cause, as few things else did, it jingled the very dis: 
sonance of yore. One afternoon a scissor- grinder 
chanced to set his wheel a-going under the Pyncheon 
Elm, and just in front of the arched window. Children 
came running with their mothers’ scissors, or the carv- 
ing-knife, or the paternal razor, or anything else that 
lacked an edge (except, indeed, poor Clifford’s wits), 
that the grinder might apply the article to his magic 
wheel, and give it back as good as new. Round went 
the busily revolving machinery, kept in motion by the 
scissor-grinder’s foot, and wore away the hard steel 
against the hard stone, whence issued an intense and 
spiteful prolongation of a hiss as fierce as those emitted 
by Satan and his compeers in Pandemonium, though 
squeezed into smaller compass. It was an ugly, little, 
venomous serpent of a noise, as ever did petty violence 
to human ears. But Clifford listened with rapturous 
delight. The sound, however disagreeable, had very 
brisk life in it, and, together with the circle of curious 
children watching the revolutions of the wheel, ap- 
peared to give him a more vivid sense of active, bust- 
ling, and sunshiny existence than he had attained in 
almost any other way. Nevertheless, its charm lay 
chiefly in the past ; for the scissor-grinder’s wheel had 
hissed in his childish ears. 

He sometimes made doleful complaint that there 
were no stage-coaches nowadays. And he asked in an 
injured tone what had become of all those old square- 
top chaises, with wings sticking out on either side, 
that used to be drawn by a plough-horse, and driven 
by a farmer’s wife and daughter, peddling whortle- 
berries and blackberries about the town. Their dis- 
appearance made him doubt, he said, whether the ber 


196 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


ries had not left off growing in the broad pastures and 
along the shady country lanes. 

But anything that appealed to the sense of beauty, 
in however humble a way, did not require to be recom- 
mended by these old associations. This was observa- 
ble when one of those Italian boys (who are rather a 
modern feature of our streets) came along with his 
barrel-organ, and stopped under the wide and cool 
shadows of the elm. With his quick professional eye 
he took note of the two faces watching him from the 
arched window, and, opening his instrument, began to 
scatter its melodies abroad. He had a monkey on his 
shoulder, dressed in a Highland plaid; and, to com- 
plete the sum of splendid attractions wherewith he 
presented himself to the public, there was a company 
of little figures, whose sphere and habitation was in 
the mahogany case of his organ, and whose principle 
of life was the music which the Italian made it his 
business to grind out. In all their variety of occupa- 
tion, —the cobbler, the blacksmith, the soldier, the 
Jady with her fan, the toper with his bottle, the milk- 
maid sitting by her cow, — this fortunate little society 
might truly be said to enjoy a harmonious existence, 
and to make life literally a dance. The Italian turned 
a crank; and, behold! every one of these small indi- 
viduals started into the most curious vivacity. The 
cobbler wrought upon a shoe; the blacksmith ham- 
mered his iron; the soldier waved his glittering blade ; 
the lady raised a tiny breeze with her fan; the jolly 
toper swigged lustily at his bottle; a scholar opened 
his book with eager thirst for knowledge, and turned 
his head to and fro along the page; the milkmaid en- 
ergetically drained her cow; and a miser counted gold 
into his strong-box,— all at the same turning of 8 


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THE ARCHED WINDOW. 197 


erank. Yes; and, moved by the self-same impulse, 
a lover saluted his mistress on her lips! Possibly 
some cynic, at once merry and bitter, had desired te 
signify, in this pantomimic scene, that we mortals, 
whatever our business or amusement, — however seri- 
ous, however trifling,— all dance to one identical 
tune, and, in spite of our ridiculous activity, bring 
nothing finally to pass. For the most remarkable 
aspect of the affair was, that, at the. cessation of the 
music, everybody was petrified, at once, from the most 
extravagant life into a dead torpor. Neither was the 
cobbler’s shoe finished, nor the blacksmith’s iron 
shaped out; nor was there a drop less of brandy in 
the toper’s bottle, nor a drop more of milk in the 
milkmaid’s pail, nor one additional coin in the miser’s 
strong-box, nor was the scholar a page deeper in his 
book. All were precisely in the same condition as 
before they made themselves so ridiculous by their 
haste to toil, to enjoy, to accumulate gold, and to be- 
come wise. Saddest of all, moreover, the lover was 
none the happier for the maiden’s granted kiss! But, 
rather than swallow this last too acrid ingredient, we 
reject the whole moral of the show. 

The monkey, meanwhile, with a thick tail curling 
out into preposterous prolixity from beneath his tar- 
tans, took his station at the Italian’s feet. He turned 
a wrinkled and abominable little visage to every pass- 
er-by, and to the circle of children that soon gathered 
round, and to Hepzibah’s shop-door, and upward to 
the arched window, whence Phebe and Clifford were 
looking down. Every moment, also, he took off his 
Highland bonnet, and performed a bow and scrape. 
Sometimes, moreover, he made personal application to 


individuals, holding out his small black palm, and 


198 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


otherwise plainly signifying his excessive desire fo1 
whatever filthy lucre might happen to be in anybody’s 
pocket. The mean and low, yet strangely man-like 
expression of his wilted countenance; the prying and 
crafty glance, that showed him ready to gripe at every 
miserable advantage; his enormous tail (too enormous 
to be decently concealed under his gabardine), and 
the deviltry of nature which it betokened, — take this 
monkey just as he was, in short, and you could desire 
no better image of the Mammon of copper coin, sym. 
bolizing the grossest form of the love of money. 
Neither was there any possibility of satisfying the 
covetous little devil. Phoebe threw down a whole 
handful of cents, which he picked up with joyless 
eagerness, handed them over to the Italian for safe- 
keeping, and immediately recommenced a series of 
pantomimic petitions for more. 

Doubtless, more than one New-Englander — or, let 
him be of what country he might, it is as likely to be 
the case — passed by, and threw a look at the monkey, 
and went on, without imagining how nearly his own 
moral condition was here exemplified. Clifford, how- 
ever, was a being of another order. He had taken 
childish delight in the music, and smiled, too, at the 
figures which it set in motion. But, after looking a 
while at the long-tailed imp, he was so shocked by his 
horrible ugliness, spiritual as well as physical, that he 
actually began to shed tears; a weakness which men 
of merely delicate endowments, and destitute of the 
fiercer, deeper, and more tragic power of laughter, can 
hardly avoid, when the worst and meanest aspect of 
life happens to be presented to them. 

Pyncheon Street was sometimes enlivened by spec 
facles of more imposing pretensions than the above, 


THE ARCHED WINDOW. 199 


and which brought the multitude along with them. 
With a shivering repugnance at the idea of personal 
contact with the world, a powerful impulse still seized 
on Clifford, whenever the rush and roar of the human 
tide grew strongly audible to him. This was made 
evident, one day, when a political procession, with 
hundreds of flaunting banners, and drums, fifes, clari- 
ons, and cymbals, reverberating between the rows of 
buildings, marched all through town, and trailed its 
length of trampling footsteps, and most infrequent 
uproar, past the ordinarily quiet House of the Seven 
Gables. Asa mere object of sight, nothing is more 
deficient in picturesque features than a procession seen 
in its passage through narrow streets. The spectator 
feels it to be fool’s play, when he can distinguish the 
tedious commonplace of each man’s visage, with the 
perspiration and weary self-importance on it, and the 
very cut of his pantaloons, and the stiffness or laxity 
of his shirt-collar, and the dust on the back of his 
black coat. In order to become majestic, it should be 
viewed from some vantage point, as it rolls its slow 
and long array through the centre of a wide plain, or 
the stateliest public square of a city; for then, by its 
remoteness, it melts all the petty personalities, of 
which it is made up, into one broad mass of existence, 
—one great life, —one collected body of mankind, 
with a vast, homogeneous spirit animating it. But, 
on the other hand, if an impressible person, standing 
alone over the brink of one of these processions, should 
behold it, not in its atoms, but in its aggregate, —as 
a mighty river of life, massive in its tide, and black 
with mystery, and, out of its depths, calling to the kin- 
dred depth within him,—then the contiguity would 
add to the effect. It might so fascinate him that he 


906 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


would hardly be restrained from plunging into the 
surging stream of human sympathies. 

So it proved with Clifford. He shuddered; he grew 
pale; he threw an appealing look at Hepzibah and 
Phoebe, who were with him at the window. They 
comprehended nothing of his emotions, and supposed 
him merely disturbed by the unaccustomed tumult. 
At last, with tremulous limbs, he started up, set his 
foot on the window-sill, and in an instant more would 
have been in the unguarded balcony. As it was, the 
whole procession might have seen him, a wild, haggard 
figure, his gray locks floating in the wind that waved 
their banners; a lonely being, estranged from his 
race, but now feeling himself man again, by virtue of 
the irrepressible instinct that possessed him. Had 
Clifford attained the balcony, he would probably have 
leaped into the street; but whether impelled by the 
species of terror that sometimes urges its victim over 
the very precipice which he shrinks from, or by a 
natural magnetism, tending towards the great centre 
of humanity, it were not easy to decide. Both im- 
pulses might have wrought on him at once. 

But his companions, affrighted by his gesture, — 
which was that of a man hurried away in spite of 
himself, — seized Clifford’s garment and held him 
back. Hepzibah shrieked. Phoebe, to whom all ex- 
travagance was a horror, burst into sobs and tears. 

“Clifford, Clifford! are you crazy?” cried his 
sister. 

“‘T hardly know, Hepzibah,” said Clifford, drawing 
a long breath. “ Fear nothing, —it is over now, — 
but had I taken that plunge, and survived it, methinks 
it would have made me another man! ” 

Possibly, in some sense, Clifford may have beer 


THE ARCHED WINDOW. 201 


right. He needed a shock; or perhaps he required ta 
take a deep, deep plunge into the ocean of human life, 
and to sink down and be covered by its profoundness, 
and then to emerge, sobered, invigorated, restored te 
the world and to himself. Perhaps, again, he required 
nothing less than the great final remedy — death! 

A similar yearning to renew the broken links of 
brotherhood with his kind sometimes showed itself in 
a milder form; and once it was made beautiful by the 
religion that lay even deeper than itself. In the inci- 
dent now to be sketched, there was a touching recogni- 
tion, on Clifford’s part, of God’s care and love towards 
him, — towards this poor, forsaken man, who, if any 
mortal could, might have been pardoned for regarding 
himself as thrown aside, forgotten, and left to be the 
sport of some fiend, whose playfulness was an ecstasy 
of mischief. 

It was the Sabbath morning; one of those bright, 
calm Sabbaths, with its own hallowed atmosphere, 
when Heaven seems to diffuse itself over the earth’s 
face in a solemn smile, no less sweet than solemn. On 
such a Sabbath morn, were we pure enough to be its 
medium, we should be conscious of the earth’s natural 
worship ascending through our frames, on whatever 
spot of ground we stood. The church-bells, with va- 
rious tones, but all in harmony, were calling out, and 
responding to one another, —“ It is the Sabbath ! — 
The Sabbath! — Yea; the Sabbath!’ — and over 
the whole city the bells scattered the blessed sounds, 
now slowly, now with livelier joy, now one bell alone, 
now all the bells together, crying earnestly, — “ It is 
the Sabbath!” and flinging their accents afar off, to 
melt into the air, and pervade it with the holy word. 
The air, with God’s sweetest and tenderest sunshine 


202 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


in it, was meet for mankind to breathe inte their 
hearts, and send it forth again as the utterance of 
prayer. 

Clifford sat at the window with Hepzibah, watching 
the neighbors as they stepped into the street. All of 
them, however unspiritual on other days, were transfig- 
ured by the Sabbath influence ; so that their very gar. 
ments — whether it were an old man’s decent coat well 
brushed for the thousandth time, or a little boy’s first 
sack and trousers finished yesterday by his mother’s 
needle — had somewhat of the quality of ascension- 
robes. Forth, likewise, from the portal of the old 
house, stepped Pheebe, putting up her small green sun- 
shade, and throwing upward a glance and smile of 
parting kindness to the faces at the arched window. 
In her aspect there was a familiar gladness, and a ho- 
liness that you could play with, and yet reverence it 
as much as ever. She was like a prayer, offered up in 
the homeliest beauty of one’s mother-tongue. Fresh 
was Phoebe, moreover, and airy and sweet in her ap 
parel; as if nothing that she wore — neither her 
gown, nor her small straw bonnet, nor her little ker- 
chief, any more than her snowy stockings — had ever 
been put on before ; or, if worn, were all the fresher 
for it, and with a fragrance as if they had lain among 
the rose-buds. 

The girl waved her hand to Hepzibah and Clifford, 
and went up the street; a religion in herself, warm, 
simple, true, with a substance that could walk on earth, 
and a spirit that was capable of heaven. 

“‘ Hepzibah,” asked Clifford, after watching Pheebe 
to the corner, “do you never go to church?” 

‘No, Clifford!” she replied, — “ not these many. 
many years!” 











FRESH WAS PH@BE, MOREOVER, AND AIRY AND 
SWEET IN HER APPAREL 





THE ARCHED WINDOW. 203 


“Were I to be there,” he rejoined, “it seems to me 
that I could pray once more, when so many human 
souls were praying all around me!” 

She looked into Clifford’s face, and beheld there a 
soft natural effusion; for his heart gushed out, as it 
were, and ran over at his eyes, in delightful reverence 
for God, and kindly affection for his human brethren. 
The emotion communicated itself to Hepzibah. She 
yearned to take him by the hand, and go and kneel 
down, they two together, — both so long separate from 
the world, and, as she now recognized, scarcely friends 
with Him above, — to kneel down among the people, 
and be reconciled to God and man at once. 

“Dear brother,” said she, earnestly, “let us go! 
We belong nowhere. We have not a foot of space in 
any church to kneel upon ; but let us go to some place 
of worship, even if we stand in the broad aisle. Poor 
and forsaken as we are, some pew-door will be opened 
to us!” 

So Hepzibah and her brother made themselves 
ready, — as ready as they could in the best of their 
old-fashioned garments, which had hung on pegs, or 
been laid away in trunks, so long that the dampness 
and mouldy smell of the past was on them, — made 
themselves ready, in their faded bettermost, to go to 
church. They descended the staircase together, — 
gaunt, sallow Hepzibah, and pale, emaciated, age- 
stricken Clifford! They pulled open the front door, 
and stepped across the threshold, and felt, both of 
them, as if they were standing in the presence of the 
whole world, and with mankind’s great and terrible 
eye on them alone. The eye of their Father seemed 
to be withdrawn, and gave them no encouragement, 
Che warm sunny air of the street made them shiver 


904. THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


Their hearts quaked within them at the idea of taking 
one step farther. 

“Tt cannot be, Hepzibah!—it is too late,” said 
Clifford, with deep sadness. ‘ We are ghosts! We 
have no right among human beings, — no right any- 
where but in this old house, which has a curse on it, 
and which, therefore, we are doomed to haunt! And, 
besides,” he continued, with a fastidious sensibility, 
inalienably characteristic of the man, “it would not 
be fit nor beautiful to go! It is an ugly thought that 
I should be frightful to my fellow-beings, and that 
children would cling to their mothers’ gowns at sight 
of me!” 

They shrank back into the dusky passage-way, and 
closed the door. But, going up the staircase again, 
they found the whole interior of the house tenfold 
more dismal, and the air closer and heavier, for the 
glimpse and breath of freedom which they had just 
snatched. They could not flee; their jailer had but 
left the door ajar in mockery, and stood behind it to 
watch them stealing out. At the threshold, they felt 
his pitiless gripe upon them. For, what other dungeon 
is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexor- 
able as one’s self! 

But it would be no fair picture of Clifford’s state of 
mind were we to represent him as continually or pre- 
vailingly wretched. On the contrary, there was no 
other man in the city, we are bold to affirm, of so much 
as half his years, who enjoyed so many lightsome and 
griefless moments as himself. He had no burden of 
care upon him; there were none of those questions and 
contingencies with the future to be settled which wear 
away all other lives, and render them not worth having 
by the very process of providing for their support. In 


THE ARCHED WINDOW. 205 


this respect he was a child, —a child for the whole 
term of his existence, be it long or short. Indeed, his 
life seemed to be standing still at a period little in ad. 
vance of childhood, and to cluster all his reminiscences 
about that epoch ; just as, after the torpor of a heavy 
blow, the sufferer’s reviving consciousness goes back to 
a moment considerably behind the accident that stupe- 
fied him. He sometimes told Phebe and Hepzibah 
his dreams, in which he invariably played the part of 
a child, or a very young man. So vivid were they, in 
his relation of them, that he once held a dispute with 
his sister as to the particular figure or print of a chintz 
morning-dress, which he had seen their mother wear, 
in the dream of the preceding night. Hepzibah, piqu- 
ing herself on a woman’s accuracy in such matters, 
held it to be slightly different from what Clifford de- 
scribed; but, producing the very gown from an old 
trunk, it proved to be identical with his remembrance 
of it. Had Clifford, every time that he emerged out 
of dreams so lifelike, undergone the torture of trans- 
formation from a boy into an old and broken man, the 
daily recurrence of the shock would have been too 
much to bear. It would have caused an acute agony 
to thrill from the morning twilight, all the day through, 
until bedtime ; and even then would have mingled a 
dull, inscrutable pain, and pallid hue of misfortune, 
with the visionary bloom and adolescence of his slum- 
ber. But the nightly moonshine interwove itself with 
the morning mist, and enveloped him as in a robe, 
which he hugged about his person, and seldom let re- 
alities pierce through; he was not often quite awake, 
but slept open-eyed, and perhaps fancied himself most 
dreaming then. 

Thus, lingering always so near his childhood, he 


206 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


had sympathies with children, and kept his heart the 
fresher thereby, like a reservoir into which rivulets 
were pouring not far from the fountain-head. Though 
prevented, by a subtile sense of propriety, from desir- 
ing to associate with them, he loved. few things better 
than to look out of the arched window, and see a little 
girl driving her hoop along the sidewalk, or school 
boys at a game of ball. Their voices, also, were very 
pleasant to him, heard at a distance, all swarming and 
intermingling together as flies do in a sunny room. 
Clifford would, doubtless, have been glad to share 
their sports. One afternoon he was seized with an ir- 
resistible desire to blow soap-bubbles ; an amusement, 
as Hepzibah told Phebe apart, that had been a favor- 
ite one with her brother when they were both children. 
Behold him, therefore, at the arched window, with an 
earthen pipe in his mouth! Behold him, with his gray 
hair, and a wan, unreal smile over his countenance, 
where still hovered a beautiful grace, which his worst 
enemy must have acknowledged to be spiritual and im- 
mortal, since it had survived so long! Behold him, 
scattering airy spheres abroad, from the window into 
the street ! Little impalpable worlds were those soap- 
bubbles, with the big world depicted, in hues bright as 
imagination, on the nothing of their surface. It was 
curious to see how the passers-by regarded these brill- 
jant fantasies, as they came floating down, and made 
the dull atmosphere imaginative about them. Some 
stopped to gaze, and, perhaps, carried a pleasant recol- 
lection of the bubbles onward as far as the street-cor- 
ner; some looked angrily upward, as if poor Clifford 
wronged them by setting an image of beauty afloat so 
near their dusty pathway. A great many put out 
their fingers or their walking-sticks to touch, withal: 


THE ARCHEL WINDOW. 207 


and were perversely gratified, no doubt, when the bub- 
ble, with all its pictured earth and sky scene, vanished 
as if it had never been. 

At length, just as an elderly gentleman of very dig- 
nified presence happened to be passing, a large bubble 
sailed majestically down, and burst right against his 
nose! He looked up,—at first with a stern, keen 
glance, which penetrated at once into the obscurity be- 
hind the arched window, —then with a smile which 
might be conceived as diffusing a dog-day sultriness 
for the space of several yards about him. 

“ Aha, Cousin Clifford!” cried Judge Pyncheon. 
* What! still blowing soap-bubbles! ” 

The tone seemed as if meant to be kind and sooth- 
ing, but yet had a bitterness of sarcasm in it. As for 
Clifford, an absolute palsy of fear came over him. 
Apart from any definite cause of dread which his past 
experience might have given him, he felt that native 
and original horror of the excellent Judge which is 
proper to a weak, delicate, and apprehensive character 
in the presence of massive strength. Strength is in- 
comprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, the more 
terrible. There is no greater bugbear than a strong- 
willed relative in the circle of his own connections. 


XI 
THE DAGUERREOTYPIST. 


Tr must not be supposed that the life of a person 
age naturally so active as Phcebe could be wholly con- 
fined within the precincts of the old Pyncheon House. 
Clifford’s demands upon her time were usually sat- 
isfied, in those long days, considerably earlier than 
sunset. Quiet as his daily existence seemed, it never- 
theless drained all the resources by which he lived. 
It was not physical exercise that overwearied him, — 
for except that he sometimes wrought a little with a 
hoe, or paced the garden-walk, or, in rainy weather, 
traversed a large unoccupied room, —it was his ten- 
dency to remain only too quiescent, as regarded any 
toil of the limbs and muscles. But, either there was 
a smouldering fire within him that consumed his vi- 
tal energy, or the monotony that would have dragged 
itself with benumbing effect over a mind differently 
situated was no monotony to Clifford. Possibly, he 
was in a state of second growth and recovery, and war 
constantly assimilating nutriment for his spirit and in- 
tellect from sights, sounds, and events, which passed 
as a perfect void to persons more practised with the 
world. As all is activity and vicissitude to the new 
mind of a child, so might it be, likewise, to a mind 
that had undergone a kind of new creation, after its 
long-suspended life. 

Be the cause what it might, Clifford commonly re 


THE DAGUERREOTYPIST. 209 


tired to rest, thoroughly exhausted, while the sunbeams 
were still melting through his window-curtains, or were 
thrown with late lustre on the chamber wall. And 
while he thus slept early, as other children do, and 
dreamed of childhood, Phcebe was free to follow her 
own tastes for the remainder of the day and evening. 
This was a freedom essential to the health even of a 
character so little susceptible of morbid influences as 
that of Phebe. The old house, as we have already 
said, had both the dry-rot and the damp-rot in its walls ; 
it was not good to breathe no other atmosphere than 
that. Hepzibah, though she had her valuable and re- 
deeming traits, had grown to be a kind of lunatic, by 
imprisoning herself so long in one place, with no other 
company than a single series of ideas, and but one af- 
fection, and one bitter sense of wrong. Clifford, the 
reader may perhaps imagine, was too inert to operate 
morally on his fellow-creatures, however intimate and 
exclusive their relations with him. But the sympathy 
or magnetism among human beings is more subtile and 
universal than we think; it exists, indeed, among dif- 
ferent classes of organized life, and vibrates from one 
to another. A flower, for instance, as Pheebe herself 
observed, always began to droop sooner in Clifford’s 
hand, or Hepzibah’s, than in her own; and by the 
same law, converting her whole daily life into a flower- 
fragrance for these two sickly spirits, the blooming 
girl must inevitably droop and fade much sooner than 
if worn on a younger and happier breast. Unless she 
had now and then indulged her brisk impulses, and 
breathed rural air in a suburban walk, or ocean breezes 
along the shore, — had occasionally obeyed the impulse 
of Nature, in New England girls, by attending a met- 


aphysical or philosophical lecture, or viewing a seven: 
VOL. I1I- 14 


210 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


mile panorama, or listening to a concert, — had gone 
shopping about the city, ransacking entire depots of 
splendid merchandise, and bringing home a ribbon, — 
had employed, likewise, a little time to read the Bible 
in her chamber, and had stolen a little more to think 
of her mother and her native place, — unless for such 
moral medicines as the above, we should soon have be- 
held our poor Phebe grow thin and put on a bleached 
unwholesome aspect, and assume strange, shy ways, 
prophetic of old-maidenhood and a cheerless future. 

Even as it was, a change grew visible; a change 
partly to be regretted, although whatever charm it in- 
fringed upon was repaired by another, perhaps more 
precious. She was not so constantly gay, but had her 
moods of thought, which Clifford, on the whole, liked 
better than her former phase of unmingled cheerful- 
ness; because now she understood him better and 
more delicately, and sometimes even interpreted him 
to himself. Her eyes looked larger, and darker, and 
deeper; so deep, at some silent moments, that they 
seemed like Artesian wells, down, down, into the in- 
finite. She was less girlish than when we first beheld 
her alighting from the omnibus; less girlish, but more 
@ woman. 

The only youthful mind with which Phebe had an 
opportunity of frequent intercourse was that of the 
daguerreotypist. Inevitably, by the pressure of the 
seclusion about them, they had been brought into hab- 
its of some familiarity. Had they met under different 
circumstances, neither of these young persons would 
have been likely to bestow much thought upon the 
other, unless, indeed, their extreme dissimilarity should 
have proved a principle of mutual attraction. Both, it 
is true, were characters proper to New England life 


THE DAGUERREOTYPIST. 213 


and possessing a common ground, therefore, in their 
more external developments; but as unlike, in their 
respective interiors, as if their native climes had been 
at world-wide distance. During the early part of their 
acquaintance, Phcebe had held back rather more than 
was customary with her frank and simple manners 
from Holgrave’s not very marked advances. Nor was 
she yet satisfied that she knew him well, although 
they almost daily met and talked together, in a kind, 
friendly, and what seemed to be a familiar way. 

The artist, in a desultory manner, had imparted to 
Pheebe something of his history. Young as he was, 
and had his career terminated at the point already at- 
tained, there had been enough of incident to fill, very 
creditably, an autobiographic volume. A romance on | 
the plan of Gil Blas, adapted to American society and 
manners, would cease to be a romance. The experience 
of many individuals among us, who think it hardly 
worth the telling, would equal the vicissitudes of the 
Spaniard’s earlier life; while their ultimate success, or 
the point whither they tend, may be incomparably 
higher than any that a novelist would imagine for his 
hero. Holgrave, as he told Phoebe, somewhat proudly, 
could not boast of his origin, unless as being exceed- 
ingly humble, nor of his education, except that it had 
been the scantiest possible, and obtained by a few win- 
ter-months’ attendance at a district school. Left early 
to his own guidance, he had begun to be self-depend.- 
ent while yet a boy; and it was a condition aptly 
suited to his natural force of will. Though now but 
twenty-two years old (lacking some months, which are 
years in such a life), he had already been, first, a 
country schoolmaster; next, a salesman in a country 
store; and, either at the same time or afterwards, the 


912 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


political editor of a country newspaper. He had sub 
sequently travelled New England and the Middle 
States, as a pedlar, in the employment of a Connecti. 
cut manufactory of cologne-water and other essences. 
In an episodical way he had studied and practised 
dentistry, and with very flattering success, especially 
in many of the factory-towns along our inland streams, 
As a supernumerary official, of some kind or other, 
aboard a packet-ship, he had visited Europe, and 
found means, before his return, to see Italy, and part 
of France and Germany. At a later period he had 
spent some months in a community of Fourierists. 
Still more recently he had been a public lecturer on 
Mesmerism, for which science (as he assured Phebe, 
and, indeed, satisfactorily proved, by putting Chanti- 
cleer, who happened to be scratching near by, to 
sleep) he had very remarkable endowments. 

His present phase, as a daguerreotypist, was of no 
more importance in his own view, nor likely to be 
more permanent, than any of the preceding ones. It 
had been taken up with the careless alacrity of an ad- 
venturer, who had his bread to earn. It would be 
thrown aside as carelessly, whenever he should choose 
to earn his bread by some other equally digressive 
means. But what was most remarkable, and, per- 
haps, showed a more than common poise in the young 
man, was the fact that, amid all these personal vicis- 
situdes, he had never lost his identity. Homeless as 
he had been, — continually changing his whereabout, 
and, therefore, responsible neither to public opinion 
nor to individuals, — putting off one exterior, and 
snatching up another, to be soon shifted for a third,—~ 
he had never violated the innermost man, but had car. 
tied his conscience along with him. It was impossibie 


THE DAGUERREOTYPIST. 218 


to know Holgrave without recognizing this to be the 
fact. Hepzibah had seen it. Phoebe soon saw it, 
likewise, and gave him the sort of confidence whick 
such a certainty inspires. She was startled, however, 
and sometimes repelled, — not by any doubt of his 
integrity to whatever law he acknowledged, but by a 
sense that his law differed from her own. He made 
her uneasy, and seemed to unsettle everything around 
her, by his lack of reverence for what was fixed, un- 
less, at a moment’s warning, it could establish its right 
to hold its ground. 

Then, moreover, she scarcely thought him affection- 
ate in his nature. He was too calm and cool an ob- 
server. Phebe felt his eye, often; his heart, seldom 
or never. He took a certain kind of interest in Hep- 
zibah and her brother, and Phebe herself. He 
studied them attentively, and allowed no slightest cir- 
cumstance of their individualities to escape him. He 
was ready to do them whatever good he might; but, 
after all, he never exactly made common cause with 
them, nor gave any reliable evidence that he loved 
them better in proportion as he knew them more. In 
his relations with them, he seemed to be in quest of 
mental food, not heart-sustenance. Phcebe could not 
conceive what interested him so much in her friends 
and herself, intellectually, since he cared nothing fo1 
them, or, comparatively, so little, as objects of human 
affection. 

Always, in his interviews with Phebe, the artist 
made especial inquiry as to the welfare of Clifford, 
whom, except at the Sunday festival, he seldom saw. 

“‘ Does he still seem happy ?”’ he asked one day. 

*¢ As happy as a child,” answered Phebe ; “ but- - 
like a child, too— very easily disturbed.” 


214 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


“ How disturbed ?” inquired Holgrave. “ By things 
without, or by thoughts within ? ” 

“TI cannot see his thoughts! How should 1?” re. 
plied Pheebe, with simple piquancy. “ Very often 
his humor changes without any reason that can be 
guessed at, just as a cloud comes over the sun. Lat: 
terly, since I have begun to know him better, I feel ii 
to be not quite right to look closely into his moods, 
He has had such a great sorrow, that his heart is 
made all solemn and sacred by it. When he is cheer- 
ful, — when the sun shines into his mind, — then ] 
venture to peep in, just as far as the light reaches, 
but no further. It is holy ground where the shadow 
falls!” 

‘How prettily you express this sentiment!” said 
the artist. ‘1 can understand the feeling, without 
possessing it. Had I your opportunities, no scruples 
would prevent me from fathoming Clifford to the full 
depth of my plummet-line !” 

‘“‘ How strange that you should wish it!” remarked 
Pheebe, involuntarily. “ What is Cousin Clifford te 
you?” 

“Oh, nothing, — of course, nothing!” answered 
Holgrave, with a smile. ‘Only this is such an odd 
and incomprehensible world! The more I look at it 
the more it puzzles me, and I begin to suspect that 
a man’s bewilderment is the measure of his wisdom. 
Men and women, and children, too, are such strange 
creatures, that one never can be certain that he really 
knows them; nor ever guess what they have been, 
from what he sees them to be now. Judge Pyncheon! 
Clifford! What a complex riddle —a complexity of 
complexities— do they present! It requires intuitive 
sympathy, like a young girl’s, to solve it, A mere 


THE DAGUERREOTYPIST. 215 


observer, like myself (who never have any intuitions 
and am, at best, only subtile and acute), is pretty cer. 
tain to go astray.” 

The artist now turned the conversation to themes 
less dark than that which they had touched upon. 
Phebe and he were young together; nor had Hol 
grave, in his premature experience of life, wasted en- 
tirely that beautiful spirit of youth, which, gushing 
forth from one small heart and fancy, may diffuse it- 
self over the universe, making it all as bright as on 
the first day of creation. Man’s own youth is the 
world’s youth; at least, he feels as if it were, and 
imagines that the earth’s granite substance is some- 
thing not yet hardened, and which he can mould into 
whatever shape he likes. So it was with Holgrave. 
He could talk sagely about the world’s old age, but 
never actually believed what he said; he was a young 
man still, and therefore looked upon the world — that 
gray-bearded and wrinkled profligate, decrepit, with- 
out being venerable —as a tender stripling, capable 
of being improved into all that it ought to be, but 
scarcely yet had shown the remotest promise of be- 
coming. He had that sense, or inward prophecy, — 
which a young man had better never have been born 
than not to have, and a mature man had better die at 
once than utterly to relinquish, — that we are not 
doomed to creep on forever in the old bad way, but 
that, this very now, there are the harbingers abroad 
of a golden era, to be accomplished in his own life- 
time. It seemed to Holgrave —as doubtless it has 
seemed to the hopeful of every century since the 
epoch of Adam’s grandchildren — that in this age, 
more than ever before, the moss-grown and rotten 
Past is to be torn down, and lifeless institutions to be 


210 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


thrust out of the way, and their dead corpses buried, 
and everything to begin anew. 

As to the main point, — may we never live to doubt 
it!—as to the better centuries that are coming, the 
artist was surely right. His error lay in supposing 
that this age, more than any past or future one, is des. 
tined to see the tattered garments of Antiquity ex- 
changed for a new suit, instead of gradually renewing 
themselves by patchwork ; in applying his own little 
life-span as the measure of an interminable achieve- 
ment ; and, more than all, in fancying that it mattered 
anything to the great end in view whether he himself 
should contend for it or against it. Yet it was well 
for him to think so. This enthusiasm, infusing itself 
through the calmness of his character, and thus taking 
an aspect of settled thought and wisdom, would serve 
to keep his youth pure, and make his aspirations high. 
And when, with the years settling down more weight- 
ily upon him, his early faith should be modified by in- 
evitable experience, it would be with no harsh and 
sudden revolution of his sentiments. He would still 
have faith in man’s brightening destiny, and perhaps 
love him all the better, as he should recognize his 
helplessness in his own behalf; and the haughty faith, 
with which he began life, would be well bartered for a 
far humbler one at its close, in discerning that man’s 
best directed effort accomplishes a kind of dream, while 
God is the sole worker of realities. 

Holgrave had read very little, and that little in 
passing through the thoroughfare of life, where the 
mystic language of his books was necessarily mixed 
up with the babble of the multitude, so that both one 
and the other were apt to lose any sense that might 
have been properly their own. He considered him- 


THE DAGUERREOTYPIST. 21% 


self a thinker, and was certainly of a thoughtful turn, 
but, with his own path to discover, had perhaps hardly 
yet reached the point where an educated man begins 
to think. The true value of his character lay in that 
deep consciousness of inward strength, which made all 
his past vicissitudes seem merely like a change of gar- 
ments ; in that enthusiasm, so quiet that he scarcely 
knew of its existence, but which gave a warmth to 
averything that he laid his hand on; in that personal 
ambition, hidden — from his own as well as other eyes 
— among his more generous impulses, but in which 
lurked a certain efficacy, that might solidify him from 
a theorist into the champion of some practicable cause. 
Altogether in his culture and want of culture, — in 
his crude, wild, and misty philosophy, and the prac. 
tical experience that counteracted some of its tenden- 
cies; in his magnanimous zeal for man’s welfare, and 
his recklessness of whatever the ages had established 
in man’s behalf; in his faith, and in his infidelity; in 
what he had, and in what he lacked, — the artist might 
fitly enough stand forth as the representative of many 
compeers in his native land. 

His career it would be difficult to prefigure. There 
appeared to be qualities in Holgrave, such as, in a 
country where everything is free to the hand that can 
grasp it, could hardly fail to put some of the world’s 
prizes within his reach. But these matters are de- 
lightfully uncertain. At almost every step in life, we 
meet with young men of just about Holgrave’s age, 
for whom we anticipate wonderful things, but of whom, 
even after much and careful inquiry, we never happen 
to hear another word. ‘The effervescence of youth 
and passion, and the fresh gloss of the intellect and 
unagination, endow them with a false brilliancy, which 


218 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


makes fools of themselves and other people. Like 
certain chintzes, calicoes, and ginghams, they show 
finely in their first newness, but cannot stand the sun 
and rain, and assume a very sober aspect after wash 
ing-day. ) 

But our business is with Holgrave as we find him 
on this particular afternoon, and in the arbor of the 
Pyncheon garden. In that point of view, it was a 
pleasant sight to behold this young man, with so much 
faith in himself, and so fair an appearance of admira- 
ble powers, —so little harmed, too, by the many tests 
that had tried his metal,—it was pleasant to see him — 
in his kindly intercourse with Phebe. Her thought 
had scarcely done him justice when it pronounced him 
cold; or, if so, he had grown warmer now. With. 
out such purpose on her part, and unconsciously on 
his, she made the House of the Seven Gables like a 
home to him, and the garden a familiar precinct. 
With the insight on which he prided himself, he fan- 
cied that he could look through Phebe, and all around 
her, and could read her off like a page of a child’s 
story-book. But these transparent natures are often 
deceptive in their depth ; those pebbles at the bottom 
of the fountain are farther from us than we think. 
Thus the artist, whatever he might judge of Pheebe’s 
capacity, was beguiled, by some silent charm of hers, 
to talk freely of what he dreamed of doing in the 
world. He poured himself out as to another self, 
Very possibly, he forgot Phebe while he talked to 
her, and was moved only by the inevitable tendency 
of thought, when rendered sympathetic by enthusiasm 
and emotion, to flow into the first safe reservoir which 
it finds. But, had you peeped at them through the 
chinks of the garden-fence, the young man’s earnest 


THE DAGUERREOTYPIST. 219 


ness and heightened color might have led you to supe. 
pose that he was making love to the young girl! 

At length, something was said by Holgrave that 
made it apposite for Pheebe to inquire what had first 
brought him acquainted with her cousin Hepzibah, 
and why he now chose to lodge in the desolate old 
Pyncheon House. Without directly answering her, 
he turned from the Future, which had heretofore 
been the theme of his discourse, and began to speak 
of the influences of the Past. One subject, indeed, is 
but the reverberation of the other. 

“ Shall we never, never get rid of this Past?” cried 
he, keeping up the earnest tone of his preceding con- 
versation. ‘It lies upon the Present like a giant’s 
dead body! In fact, the case is just as if a young 
giant were compelled to waste all his strength in 
carrying about the corpse of the old giant, his grand- 
father, who died a long while ago, and only needs to 
be decently buried. Just think a moment, and it will 
startle you to see what slaves we are to bygone times, 
— to Death, if we give the matter the right word ! ” 

“¢ But I do not see it,” observed Phoebe. 

** Wor example, then,” continued Holgrave : “a dead 
man, if he happen to have made a will, disposes of 
wealth no longer his own; or, if he die intestate, it 
is distributed in accordance with the notions of men 
much longer dead than he. A dead man sits on all 
our judgment-seats ; and living judges do but search 
out and repeat his decisions. We read in dead men’s 
books! We laugh at dead men’s jokes, and cry at 
dead men’s pathos! We are sick of dead men’s dis- 
eases, physical and moral, and die of the same rem- 
edies with which dead doctors killed their patients! 
We worship the living Deity according to dead men’s 


220 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


forms and creeds. Whatever we seek to do, of our 
own free motion, a dead man’s icy hand obstructs us! 
Turn our eyes to what point we may, a dead man’s 
white, immitigable face encounters them, and freezes 
our very heart! And we must be dead ourselves be- 
fore we can begin to have our proper influence on our 
own world, which will then be no longer our world, 
but the world of another generation, with which we 
shall have no shadow of a right to interfere. I ought 
to have said, too, that we live in dead men’s houses ; 
as, for instance, in this of the Seven Gables!” 

‘* And why not,” said Phebe, ‘so long as we can 
be comfortable in them ?” 

‘“‘ But we shall live to see the day, I trust,” went on 
the artist, “when no man shall build his house for 
posterity. Why should he? He might just as rea- 
sonably order a durable suit of clothes, — leather, or 
gutta-percha, or whatever else lasts longest, — so that 
his great-grandchildren should have the benefit of 
them, and cut precisely the same figure in the world 
that he himself does. If each generation were allowed 
and expected to build its own houses, that single 
change, comparatively unimportant in itself, would 
imply almost every reform which society is now suf- 
fering for. I doubt whether even our public edifices 
— our capitols, state-houses, court-houses, city-hall, and 
churches — ought to be built of such permanent mate- 
rials as stone or brick. It were better that they should 
crumble to ruin once in twenty years, or thereabouts, 
as a hint to the people to examine into and reform the 
institutions which they symbolize.” 

“How you hate everything old!” said Phcebe, in 
dismay. ‘It makes me dizzy to think of such a shift 
ing world! ” 


THE DAGUERREOTYPIST. 291 


*T certainly love nothing mouldy,” answered Hok 
grave. ‘* Now, this old Pyncheon House! Is it a 
wholesome place to live in, with its black shingles, 
and the green moss that shows how damp they are? 
— its dark, low-studded rooms ? — its grime and sor. 
didness, which are the crystallization on its walls ol 
the human breath, that has been drawn and exhaled 
here in discontent and anguish? The house ought 
to be purified with fire, — purified till only its asher 
remain !” 

“Then why do you live in it?” asked Phebe, a 
little piqued. 

“Oh, I am pursuing my studies here; not in books, 
however,” replied Holgrave. ‘*‘ The house, in my view, 
is expressive of that odious and abominable Past, with 
all its bad influences, against which I have just been 
declaiming. I dwell in it for a while, that I may 
know the better how to hate it. By the by, did you 
ever hear the story of Maule, the wizard, and what 
happened between him and your immeasurably great. 
grandfather ? ” 

“ Yes, indeed! ” said Phebe ; “I heard it long ago, 
from my father, and two or three times from my cousin 
Hepzibah, in the month that I have been here. She 
seems to think that all the calamities of the Pyncheons 
began from that quarrel with the wizard, as you call 
him. And you, Mr. Holgrave, look as if you thought 
so too! How singular, that you should believe what 
is so very absurd, when you reject many things that 
are a great deal worthier of credit!” 

“T do believe it,” said the artist, seriously ; “‘ not ag 
a superstition, however, but as proved by unquestion- 
able facts, and as exemplifying a theory. Now, see: 
under those seven gables, at which we now look up, 


222 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


—and which old Colonel Pyncheon meant to be the 
house of his descendants, in prosperity and happiness, 
down to an epoch far beyond the present, — under 
that roof, through a portion of three centuries, there 
has been perpetual remorse of conscience, a constantly 
defeated hope, strife amongst kindred, various misery, 
a strange form of death, dark suspicion, unspeakable 
disgrace, — all, or most of which calamity I have the 
means of tracing to the old Puritan’s inordinate de- 
sire to plant and endow a family. To plant a family! 
This idea is at the bottom of most of the wrong and 
mischief which men do. The truth is, that, once in 
every half-century, at longest, a family should be 
merged into the great, obscure mass of humanity, and 
forget all about its ancestors. Human blood, in order 
to keep its freshness, should run in hidden streams, as 
the water of an aqueduct is conveyed in subterranean 
pipes. In the family existence of these Pyncheons, 
for instance, — forgive me, Phcebe; but I cannot think 
of you as one of them, — in their brief New England 
pedigree, there has been time enough to infect them 
all with one kind of Innacy or another!” 

“You speak very unceremoniously of my kindred,” 
said Phoebe, debating with herself whether she ought 
to take offence. 

“ T speak true thoughts to a true mind! ” answered 
Holgrave, with a vehemence which Phebe had not 
before witnessed in him. “The truth is as I say! 
Furthermore, the original perpetrator and father of 
this mischief appears to have perpetuated himself, and 
still walks the street, — at least, his very image, in 
mind and body, — with the fairest prospect of trans. 
mitting to posterity as rich and as wretched an inhen 
itance as he has received! Do you remember the daw 
guerreotype, and its resemblance to the old portrait ?* 





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THE DAGUERREOTYPIST. 223 


“How strangely in earnest you are!” exclaimed 
Phoebe, looking at him with surprise and perplexity ; 
half alarmed and partly inclined to laugh. ‘“ You 
talk of the lunacy of the Pyncheons; is it conta, 
gious?” 

“T understand you!” said the artist, coloring and 
laughing. ‘I believe I am a little mad. This sub- 
ject has taken hold of my mind with the strangest 
tenacity of clutch since I have lodged in yonder old 
gable. As one method of throwing it off, I have put 
an incident of the Pyncheon family history, with which 
I happen to be acquainted, into the form of a legend, 
and mean to publish it in a magazine.” 

“Do you write for the magazines?” inquired 
Phebe. 

“Is it possible you did not know it?” cried Hol- 
grave. ‘“ Well, such is literary fame! Yes, Miss 
Phcebe Pyncheon, among the multitude of my marvel- 
lous gifts I have that of writing stories; and my name 
has figured, I can assure you, on the covers of Graham 
and Godey, making as respectable an appearance, for 
aught I could see, as any of the canonized bead-roll 
with which it was associated. In the humorous line, 
I am thought to have a very pretty way with me; and 
as for pathos, I am as provocative of tears as an onion. 
But shall I read you my story?” 

“ Yes, if it is not very long,” said Phoebe, — and 
added laughingly, — “nor very dull.” 

As this latter point was one which the daguerreotyp- 
ist could not decide for himself, he forthwith produced 
his roll of manuscript, and, while the late sunbeams 
gilded the seven gables, began to read. 


XIII. 
ALICE PYNCHEON. 


THERE was a message brought, one day, from the 
worshipful Gervayse Pyncheon to young Matthew 
Maule, the carpenter, desiring his immediate presence 
at the House of the Seven Gables. 

*¢ And what does your master want with me?” said 
the carpenter to Mr. Pyncheon’s black servant. ‘* Does 
the house need any repair? Well it may, by this 
time; and no blame to my father who built it, neither! 
I was reading the old Colonel’s tombstone, no longer 
ago than last Sabbath; and, reckoning from that date, 
the house has stood seven-and-thirty years. No wonder 
if there should be a job to do on the roof.” 

“ Don’t know what massa wants,” answered Scipio. 
“The house is a berry good house, and old Colonel 
Pyncheon think so too, I reckon ; — else why the old 
man haunt it so, and frighten a poor nigga, as he 
does ?” 

“ Well, well, friend Scipio; let your master know 
that I’m coming,” said the carpenter, with a laugh. 
“ For a fair, workmanlike job, he “ll find me his man. 
And so the house is haunted, is it? It will take a 
tighter workman than | am to keep the spirits out of 
the Seven Gables. Even if the Colonel would be 
- quiet,” he added, muttering to himself, “ my old grand- 
father, the wizard, will be pretty sure to stick to the 
Pyncheons as long as their walls hold together.” 


ALICE PYNCHEON. 225 


“What ’s that you mutter to yourself, Matthew 
Maule?” asked Scipio. “ And what for do you look 
so black at me?” 

‘““No matter, darky!” said the carpenter. “Do 
you think nobody is to look black but yourself? Go 
tell your master I’m coming; and if you happen te 
see Mistress Alice, his daughter, give Matthew Maule‘s 
humble respects to her. She has brought a fair face 
from Italy, — fair, and gentle, and proud, — has that 
same Alice Pyncheon !” 

“He talk of Mistress Alice!” cried Scipio, as he 
returned from his errand. ‘ The low carpenter-man ! 
He no business so much as to look at her a great wa7 
off!” é 

This young Matthew Maule, the carpenter, it must 
be observed, was a person little understood, and not 
very generally liked, in the town where he resided ; 
not that anything could be alleged against his in- 
tegrity, or his skill and diligence in the handicraft 
which he exercised. The aversion (as it might justly 
be called) with which many persons regarded him. 
was partly the result of his own character and deport 
ment, and partly an inheritance. 

He was the grandson of a former Matthew Maule, 
one of the early settlers of the town, and who had been 
a famous and terrible wizard in his day. This old re- 
probate was one of the sufferers when Cotton Mather, 
and his brother ministers, and the learned judges, and 
other wise men, and Sir William Phipps, the sagacious 
governor, made such laudable efforts to weaken the 
great enemy of souls, by sending a multitude of his 
adherents up the rocky pathway of Gallows Hill. 
Since those days, no doubt, it had grown to be sus- 
pected that, in consequence of an unfortunate overdo- 

VOL. IIL 15 


226 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


ing of a work praiseworthy in itself, the proceedings 
against the witches had proved far less acceptable tc 
the Beneficent Father than to that very Arch Enemy 
whom they were intended to distress and utterly over- 
whelm. It is not the less certain, however, that awe 
and terror brooded over the memories of those who 
died for this horrible crime of witchcraft. Their 
graves, in the crevices of the rocks, were supposed to 
be incapable of retaining the occupants who had been 
so hastily thrust into them. Old Matthew Maule, es- 
pecially, was known to have as little hesitation or dif- 
ficulty in rising out of his grave as an ordinary man 
in getting out of bed, and was as often seen at mid- 
night as living people at noonday. This pestilent 
wizard (in whom his just punishment seemed to have 
wrought no manner of amendment) had an inveterate 
habit of haunting a certain mansion, styled the House 
of the Seven Gables, against the owner of which 
he pretended to hold an unsettled claim for ground- 
rent. The ghost, it appears, — with the pertinacity 
which was one of his distinguishing characteristics 
while alive, — insisted that he was the rightful pro- 
prietor of the site upon which the house stood. His 
terms were, that either the aforesaid ground-rent, from 
the day when the cellar began to be dug, should be 
paid down, or the mansion itself given up; else he, 
the ghostly creditor, would have his finger in all the 
affairs of the Pyncheons, and make everything go 
wrong with them, though it should be a thousand years 
after his death. It was a wild story, perhaps, but 
seemed not altogether so incredible to those who could 
remember what an inflexibly obstinate old fellow this 
wizard Maule had been. 

Now, the wizard’s grandson, the young Matthew 


ALICE PYNCHEON. ay Ati 


Maule of our story, was popularly supposed to have 
inherited some of his ancestor’s questionable traits. It 
is wonderful how many absurdities were promulgated 
in reference to the young man. He was fabled, for 
example, to have a strange power of getting into peo- 
ple’s dreams, and regulating matters there according 
to his own fancy, pretty much like the stage-manager 
of atheatre. There was a great deal of talk among 
the neighbors, particularly the petticoated ones, about 
what they called the witchcraft of Maule’s eye. Some 
said that he could look into people’s minds ; others, 
that, by the marvellous power of this eye, he could 
draw people into his own mind, or send them, if he 
pleased, to do errands to his grandfather, in the spir- 
itual world ; others, again, that it was what is termed 
an Evil Eye, and possessed the valuable faculty of 
blighting corn, and drying children into mummies with 
the heartburn. But, after all, what worked most to 
the young carpenter’s disadvantage was, first, the re- 
serve and sternness of his natural disposition, and 
next, the fact of his not being a church-communicant, 
and the suspicion of his holding heretical tenets in 
matters of religion and polity. 

After receiving Mr. Pyncheon’s message, the car- 
penter merely tarried to finish a small job, which he 
happened to have in hand, and then took his way tow- 
ards the House of the Seven Gables. This noted edi- 
fice, though its style might be getting a little out of 
fashion, was still as respectable a family residence as 
that of any gentleman in town. The present owner, 
Gervayse Pyncheon, was said to have contracted a dis- 
like to the house, in consequence of a shock to his sen- 
sibility, in early childhood, from the sudden death of 
his grandfather. In the very act of running to climb 


228 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


Colonel Pyncheon’s knee, the boy had discovered the 
old Puritan to be a corpse! On arriving at manhood, 
Mr. Pyncheon had visited England, where he married 
a lady of fortune, and had subsequently spent many 
years, partly in the mother country, and partly in va- 
rious cities on the continent of Europe. During this 
period, the family mansion had been consigned to the 
charge of a kinsman, who was allowed to make it his 
home for the time being, in consideration of keeping 
the premises in thorough repair. So faithfully had 
this contract been fulfilled, that now, as the carpenter 
approached the house, his practised eye could detect 
nothing to criticise in its condition. ‘The peaks of the 
seven gables rose up sharply; the shingled roof 
looked thoroughly water-tight; and the glittering 
plaster-work entirely covered the exterior walls, and 
sparkled in the October sun, as if it had been new 
only a week ago. 

The house had that pleasant aspect of life which is 
like the cheery expression of comfortable activity in 
the human countenance. You could see, at once, that 
there was the stir of a large family within it. A huge 
load of oak-wood was passing through the gateway, 
towards the outbuildings in the rear; the fat cook — 
or probably it might be the housekeeper — stood at 
the side door, bargaining for some turkeys and poul- 
try, which a countryman had brought for sale. Now 
and then a maid-servant, neatly dressed, and now the 
shining sable face of a slave, might be seen bustling 
across the windows, in the lower part of the house. 
At an open window of a room in the second story, 
hanging over some pots of beautiful and delicate flow- 
ers, — exotics, but which had never known a more 


genial sunshine than that of the New England autumn, 


ALICE PYNCHEON. ys ag 


~— was the figure of a young lady, an exotic, like the 
fiowers, and beautiful and delicate as they. Her pres- 
ence imparted an indescribable grace and faint witch- 
ery to the whole edifice. In other respects, it was a 
substantial, jolly-looking mansion, and seemed fit to 
be the residence of a patriarch, who might establish 
his own headquarters in the front gable and assign 
one of the remainder to each of his six children, while 
the great chimney in the centre should symbolize the 
old fellow’s hospitable heart, which kept them all 
warm, and made a great whole of the seven smaller 
ones. 

There was a vertical sundial on the front gable ; and 
as the carpenter passed beneath it, he looked up and 
noted the hour. 

“Three o’clock!” said he to himself. ‘ My father 
told me that dial was put up only an hour before the 
old Colonel’s death. How truly it has kept time 
these seven-and-thirty years past! The shadow creeps 
and creeps, and is always looking over the shoulder of 
the sunshine! ” 

It might have befitted a craftsman, like Matthew 
Maule, on being sent for to a gentleman’s house, to go 
to the back door, where servants and work-people were 
usually admitted; or at least to the side entrance, 
where the better class of tradesmen made application. 
But the carpenter had a great deal of pride and stiff- 
ness in his nature; and, at this moment, moreover, 
his heart was bitter with the sense of hereditary 
wrong, because he considered the great Pyncheon 
House to be standing on soil which should have been 
his own. On this very site, beside a spring of deli- 
cious water, his grandfather had felled the pine-trees 
and built a cottage, in which children had been born 


230 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


to him; and it was only from a dead man’s stiffened 
fingers that Colonel Pyncheon had wrested away the 
title-deeds. So young Maule went straight to the 
principal entrance, beneath a portal of carved oak, and 
gave such a peal of the iron knocker that you would 
have imagined the stern old wizard himself to be 
standing at the threshold. 

Black Scipio answered the summons in a prodigious 
hurry ; but showed the whites of his eyes, in amaze~ 
ment on beholding only the carpenter. 

‘“‘ Jord-a-mercy ! what a great man he be, this car- 
penter fellow!” mumbled Scipio, down in his throat. 
“ Anybody think he beat on the door with his biggest 
hammer! ” 

“Here I am!” said Maule, sternly. “Show me 
the way to your master’s parlor! ” 

As he stept into the house, a note of sweet and 
melancholy music thrilled and vibrated along the pas- 
sage-way, proceeding from one of the rooms above 
stairs. It was the harpsichord which Alice Pyncheon 
had brought with her from beyond the sea. The fair 
Alice bestowed most of her maiden leisure between 
flowers and music, although the former were apt tc 
droop, and the melodies were often sad. She was of 
foreign education, and could not take kindly to the 
New England modes of life, in which nothing beauti- 
ful had ever been developed. 

As Mr. Pyncheon had been impatiently awaiting 
Maule’s arrival, black Scipio, of course, lost no time in 
ushering the carpenter into his master’s presence. The 
room in which this gentleman sat was a parlor of mod- 
erate size, looking out upon the garden of the house, 
and having its windows partly shadowed by the foliage 
of fruit-trees. It was Mr. Pyncheon’s peculiar apart 


ALICE PYNCHEON. 231 


ment, and was provided with furniture, in au elegant 
and costly style, principally from Paris; the floor 
(which was unusual at that day) being covered with a 
carpet, so skilfully and richly wrought that it seemed 
to glow as with living flowers. In one corner stood a 
marble woman, to whom her own beauty was the sole 
and sufficient garment. Some pictures — that looked 
old, and had a mellow tinge diffused through all their 
artful splendor — hung on the walls. Near the fire- 
place was a large and very beautiful cabinet of ebony, 
inlaid with ivory; a piece of antique furniture, which 
Mr. Pyncheon had bought in Venice, and which he 
used as the treasure-place for medals, ancient coins, 
and whatever small and valuable curiosities he had 
picked up on his travels. Through all this variety of 
decoration, however, the room showed its original char- 
acteristics ; its low stud, its cross-beam, its chimney- 
piece, with the old-fashioned Dutch tiles; so that it 
was the emblem of a mind industriously stored with 
foreign ideas, and elaborated into artificial refine- 
ment, but neither larger, nor, in its proper self, more 
elegant than before. 

There were two objects that appeared rather out of 
place in this very handsomely furnished room. One 
was a large map, or surveyor’s plan, of a tract of land, 
which looked as if it had been drawn a good many 
years ago, and was now dingy with smoke, and soiled, 
here and there, with the touch of fingers. The other 
was a portrait of a stern old man, in a Puritan garb, 
painted roughly, but with a bold effect, and a remark- 
ably strong expression of character. 

At asmall table, before a fire of English sea-coal, 
sat Mr. Pyncheon, sipping coffee, which had grown to 
be a very favorite beverage with him in France. He 


232 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


was a middle-aged and really handsome man, with a 
wig flowing down upon his shoulders ; his coat was of 
blue velvet, with lace on the borders and at the button- 
holes; and the firelight glistened on the spacious 
breadth of his waistcoat, which was flowered all over 
with gold. On the entrance of Scipio, ushering in the 
carpenter, Mr. Pyncheon turned partly round, but re- 
sumed his former position, and proceeded deliberately 
to finish his cup of coffee, without immediate notice of 
the guest whom he had summoned to his presence. 
It was not that he intended any rudeness or improper 
neglect, — which, indeed, he would have blushed to be 
guilty of, — but it never occurred to him that a person 
in Maule’s station had a claim on his courtesy, or 
would trouble himself about it one way or the other. 

The carpenter, however, stepped at once to the 
hearth, and turned himself about, so as to look Mr. 
Pyncheon in the face. 

“You sent for me,” said he. ‘ Be pleased to ex- 
plain your business, that I may go back to my own af- 
fairs.” 

“ Ah! excuse me,” said Mr. Pyncheon, quietly. “I 
did not mean to tax your time without a recompense. 
Your name, I think, is Maule, — Thomas or Matthew 
Maule, —a son or grandson of the builder of this 
house ?”’ 

“Matthew Maule,” replied the carpenter, — “son 
of him who built the house, — grandson of the right 
ful proprietor of the soil.” 

“I know the dispute to which you allude,” observed 
Mr. Pyncheon with undisturbed equanimity. “Iam 
well aware that my grandfather was compelled to re- 
sort to a suit at law, in order to establish his claim to 
the foundation-site of this edifice. We will not, if you 


ALICE PYNCHEON. 233 


please, renew the discussion. The matter was settled 
at the time, and by the competent authorities, — equi- 
tably, it is to be presumed, — and, at all events, irrevo- 
cably. Yet, singularly enough, there is an incidental 
reference to this very subject in what I am now about 
to say to you. And this same inveterate grudge, — 
excuse me, 1 mean no offence, — this irritability, 
which you have just shown, is not entirely aside from 
the matter.” 

“Tf you can find anything for your purpose, Mr. 
Pyncheon,” said the carpenter, “in a man’s natural 
resentment for the wrongs done to his blood, you are 
welcome to it!” 

“1 take you at your word, Goodman Maule,” said 
the owner of the Seven Gables, with a smile, “ and 
will proceed to suggest a mode in which your heredi- 
tary resentments — justifiable, or otherwise — may 
have had a bearing on my affairs. You have heard, 
I suppose, that the Pyncheon family, ever since my 
grandfather’s days, have been prosecuting a still un- 
settled claim to a very large extent of territory at the 
Eastward ? ” 

“ Often,” replied Maule, —and it is said that a 
smile came over his face, —‘“ very often, — from my 
father!” 

‘This claim,’ continued Mr. Pyncheon, after paus- 
ing a moment, as if to consider what the carpenter’s 
smile might mean, “‘ appeared to be on the very verge 
of a settlement and full allowance, at the period of my 
grandfather’s decease. It was well known, to those in 
his confidence, that he anticipated neither difficulty 
nor delay. Now, Colonel Pyncheon, I need hardly 
say, was a practical man, well acquainted with public 
and private business, and not at all the person to chen 


234 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


ish ill-founded hopes, or to attempt the following out 
of an impracticable scheme. It is obvious to conclude, 
therefore, that he had grounds, not apparent to his 
heirs, for his confident anticipation of success in the 
matter of this Eastern claim. In a word, I believe, — 
and my legal advisers coincide in the belief, which, 
moreover, is authorized, to a certain extent, by the 
family traditions, —that my grandfather was in pos- 
session of some deed, or other document, essential te 
this claim, but which has since disappeared.” 

“‘ Very likely,” said Matthew Maule, — and again, 
it is said, there was a dark smile on his face, — “ but 
what can a poor carpenter have to do with the grand 
affairs of the Pyncheon family ?” 

“Perhaps nothing,” returned Mr. Pyncheon, — 
‘possibly, much! ” 

Here ensued a great many words between Matthew 
Maule and the proprietor of the Seven Gables, on the 
subject which the latter had thus broached. It seems 
(although Mr. Pyncheon had some hesitation in re- 
ferring to stories so exceedingly absurd in their as- 
pect) that the popular belief pointed to some mysteri- 
ous connection and dependence, existing between the 
family of the Maules and these vast unrealized pos- 
sessions of the Pyncheons. It was an ordinary saying 
that the old wizard, hanged though he was, had ob- 
tained the best end of the bargain in his contest with 
Colonel Pyncheon ; inasmuch as he had got possession 
of the great Eastern claim, in exchange for an acre or 
two of garden-ground. A very aged woman, recently 
dead, had often used the metaphorical expression, in 
her fireside talk, that miles and miles of the Pyncheon 
lands had been shovelled into Maule’s grave; which, 
by the by, was but a very shallow nook, between twa 


ALICE PYNCHEON. 235 


rocks, near the summit of Gallows Hill. Again, when 
the lawyers were making inquiry for the missing docu: 
ment, it was a by-word that it would never be found, 
unless in the wizard’s skeleton hand. So much weight 
had the shrewd lawyers assigned to these fables, that 
(but Mr. Pyncheon did not see fit to inform the car. 
penter of the fact) they had secretly caused the wiz 
ard’s grave to be searched. Nothing was discovered, 
however, except that, unaccountably, the right hand 
of the skeleton was gone. 

Now, what was unquestionably important, a portion 
of these popular rumors could be traced, though rather 
doubtfully and indistinctly, to chance words and ob- 
scure hints of the executed wizard’s son, and the father 
of this present Matthew Maule. And here Mr. Pyn. 
cheon could bring an item of his own personal evi 
dence into play. Though but a child at the time, he 
either remembered or fancied that Matthew’s father 
had had some job to perform, on the day before, or 
possibly the very morning of the Colonel’s decease, in 
the private room where he and the carpenter were at 
this moment talking. Certain papers belonging to 
Colonel Pyncheon, as his grandson distinctly recol- 
lected, had been spread out on the table. 

Matthew Maule understood the insinuated suspicion. 

“My father,’ he said,—but still there was that 
dark smile, making a riddle of his countenanee, — 
‘my father was an honester man than the bloody old 
Colonel! Not to get his rights back again would he 
have carried off one of those papers!” 

“T shall not bandy words with you,” observed the 
foreign-bred Mr. Pyncheon, with haughty composure. 
“ Nor will it become me to resent any rudeness tow: 


ards either my grandfather or myself. A gentleman 


236 THE HOUSE QF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


before seeking intercourse with a person of your sta 
tion and habits, will first consider whether the urgency 
of the end may compensate for the disagreeableness of 
the means. It does so in the present instance.” 

He then renewed the conversation, and made great 
pecuniary offers to the carpenter, in case the latter 
should give information leading to the discovery of the 
lost document, and the consequent success of the 
Eastern claim. For a long time Matthew Maule is 
said to have turned a cold ear to these propositions. 
At last, however, with a strange kind of laugh, he in. 
quired whether Mr. Pyncheon would make over to him 
the old wizard’s homestead-ground, together with the 
House of the Seven Gables, now standing on it, in 
requital of the documentary evidence so urgently re- 
quired. 

The wild, chimney-corner legend (which, without 
copying all its extravagances, my narrative essentially 
follows) here gives an account of some very strange 
behavior on the part of Colonel Pyncheon’s portrait. 
This picture, it must be understood, was supposed to 
be so intimately connected with the fate of the house, 
and so magically built into its walls, that, if once it 
should be removed, that very instant the whole edifice 
would come thundering down in a heap of dusty ruin. 
All through the foregoing conversation between Mr. 
Pyncheon and the carpenter, the portrait had been 
frowning, clenching its fist, and giving many such 
proofs of excessive discomposure, but without attract- 
ing the notice of either of the two colloquists. And 
finally, at Matthew Maule’s audacious suggestion of a 
transfer of the seven-gabled structure, the ghostly por- 
trait is averred to have lost all patience, and to have 
shown itself on the point of descending bodily from 


ALICE PYNCHEON. 037 


tts frame. But such incredible incidents are merely 
to be mentioned aside. 

‘Give up this house!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon, in 
amazement at the proposal. ‘“ Were I todo so, my 
grandfather would not rest quiet in his grave!” 

“ He never has, if all stories are true,” remarked 
the carpenter, composedly. ‘ But that matter concerns 
his grandson more than it does Matthew Maule. I 
have no other terms to propose.” 

Impossible as he at first thought it to comply with 
Maule’s conditions, still, on a second glance, Mr. Pyn- 
cheon was of opinion that they might at least be made 
matter of discussion. He himself had no personal at- 
tachment for the house, nor any pleasant associations 
connected with his childish residence in it. On the 
contrary, after seven-and-thirty years, the presence of 
his dead grandfather seemed still to pervade it, as on 
that morning when the affrighted boy had beheld him, 
with so ghastly an aspect, stiffening in his chair. His 
long abode in foreign parts, moreover, and familiarity 
with many of the castles and ancestral halls of Eng- 
land, and the marble palaces of Italy, had caused him 
to look contemptuously at the House of the Seven 
Gables, whether in point of splendor or convenience. 
It was a mansion exceedingly inadequate to the style 
of living which it would be incumbent on Mr. Pyn- 
cheon to support, after realizing his territorial rights. 
His steward might deign to occupy it, but never, cer- 
tainly, the great landed proprietor himself. In the 
event of success, indeed, it was his purpose to return 
to England; nor, to say the truth, would he recently 
Lave quitted that more congenial home, had not his 
own fortune, as well as his deceased wife’s, begun to 
give symptoms of exhaustion. The Eastern claim 


238 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


once fairly settled, and put upon the firm basis of 
actual possession, Mr. Pyncheon’s property —to be 
measured by miles, not acres— would be worth an 
earldom, and would reasonably entitle him to solicit, 
or enable him to purchase, that elevated dignity from 
the British monarch. Lord Pyncheon! — or the Ear] 
of Waldo! — how could such a magnate be expected 
to contract his grandeur within the pitiful compass of 
seven shingled gables ? 

In short, on an enlarged view of the business, the 
carpenter’s terms appeared so ridiculously easy that 
Mr. Pyncheon could scarcely forbear laughing in hi_ 
face. He was quite ashamed, after the foregoing re- 
flections, to propose any diminution of so moderate a 
recompense for the immense service to be rendered. 

“TI consent to your proposition, Maule,” cried he. 
“Put me in possession of the document essential to 
establish my rights, and the House of the Seven 
Gables is your own!” 

According to some versions of the story, a regular 
contract to the above effect was drawn up by a lawyer, 
and signed and sealed in the presence of witnesses. 
Others say that Matthew Maule was contented with 
a private written agreement, in which Mr. Pyncheon 
pledged his honor and integrity to the fulfilment of 
the terms concluded upon. The gentleman then or- 
dered wine, which he and the carpenter drank to- 
gether, in confirmation of their bargain. During the 
whole preceding discussion and subsequent formalities, 
the old Puritan’s portrait seems to have persisted in its 
shadowy gestures of disapproval; but without effect, 
except that, as Mr. Pyncheon set down the emptied 
glass, he thought he beheld his grandfather frown. 

“ This sherry is too potent a wine for me; it has af 


ALICE PYNCHEON. 239 


fected my brain already,” he observed, after a some: 
what startled look at the picture. ‘On returning to 
Europe, I shall confine myself to the more delicate vin- 
tages of Italy and France, the best of which will not 
bear transportation.” 

“¢ My Lord Pyncheon may drink what wine he will, 
and wherever he pleases,” replied the carpenter, as if 
he had been privy to Mr. Pyncheon’s ambitious pro- 
jects. ‘“* But first, sir, if you desire tidings of this lost 
document, I must crave the favor of a little talk with 
your fair daughter Alice.” 

“You are mad, Maule!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon, 
haughtily ; and now, at last, there was anger mixed 
up with his pride. ‘ What can my daughter have to 
do with a business like this?” 

Indeed, at this new demand on the carpenter’s part, 
the proprietor of the Seven Gables was even more 
thunder-struck than at the cool proposition to surren- 
der his house. There was, at least, an assignable 
motive for the first stipulation; there appeared to be 
none whatever for the last. Nevertheless, Matthew 
Maule sturdily insisted on the young lady being sum- 
moned, and even gave her father to understand, in a 
mysterious kind of explanation, — which made the 
matter considerably darker than it looked before, — 
that the only chance of acquiring the requisite knowl- 
edge was through the clear, crystal medium of a pure 
and virgin intelligence, like that of the fair Alice. 
Not to encumber our story with Mr. Pyncheon’s scru- 
ples, whether of conscience, pride, or fatherly affec- 
tion, he at length ordered his daughter to be called. 
He well knew that she was in her chamber, and en- 
gaged in no occupation that could not readily be laid 
aside; for, as it happened, ever since Alice’s name 


240 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


had been spoken, both her father and the carpenter 
had heard the sad and sweet music of her harpsi 
chord, and the airier melancholy of her accompanying 
voice. 

So Alice Pyncheon was summoned and appeared, 
A portrait of this young lady, painted by a Venetian 
artist, and left by her father in England, is said to 
have fallen into the hands of the present Duke of 
Devonshire, and to be now preserved at Chatsworth ; 
not on account of any associations with the original, 
but for its value as a picture, and the high character 
of beauty in the countenance. If ever there was a 
lady born, and set apart from the world’s vulgar mass 
by a certain gentle and cold stateliness, it was this 
very Alice Pyncheon. Yet there was the womanly 
mixture in her; the tenderness, or, at least, the tender 
capabilities. For the sake of that redeeming quality, 
aman of generous nature would have forgiven all her 
pride, and have been content, almost, to lie down 1” 
her path, and let Alice set her slender foot upon his 
heart. All that he would have required was simply 
the acknowledgment that he was indeed a man, and a 
fellow-being, moulded of the same elements as she. 

As Alice came into the room, her eyes fell upon the 
carpenter, who was standing near its centre, clad in a 
green woollen jacket, a pair of loose breeches, open at 
the knees, and with a long pocket for his rule, the end 
of which protruded ; it was as proper a mark of the. 
artisan’s calling, as Mr. Pyncheon’s full-dress sword 
of that gentleman’s aristocratic pretensions. A glow 
of artistic approval brightened over Alice Pyncheon’s 
face; she was struck with admiration — which she 
made no attempt to conceal — of the remarkable come- 
iness, strength, and energy of Maule’s figure. Bué 












































““MY FATHER, YOU SENT FOR ME,”’ SAID ALICE, IN 
HER SWEET AND HARP-LIKE VOICE 





ALICE PYNCHEON. 241 


that admiring glance (which most other men, per- 
haps, would have cherished as a sweet recollection, 
all through life) the carpenter never forgave. It 
must have been the devil himself that made Maule 
so subtile in his perception. 

“Does the girl look at me as if I were a brute 
beast?” thought he, setting his teeth. ‘She shall 
know whether I have a human spirit; and the worse 
for her, if it prove stronger than her own!” 

** My father, you sent for me,” said Alice, in her 
sweet and harp-like voice. “ But, if you have busi- 
ness with this young man, pray let me go again. You 
know I do not love this room, in spite of that Claude, 
with which you try to bring back sunny recollections.” 

“Stay a moment, young lady, if you please!” said 
Matthew Maule. ‘“ My business with your father is 
over. With yourself, it is now to begin! ” 

Alice looked towards her father, in surprise and in- 
quiry. 

“Yes, Alice,” said Mr. Pyncheon, with some dis- 
turbance and confusion. “This young man — his 
name is Matthew Maule — professes, so far as I can 
understand him, to be able to discover, through your 
means, a certain paper or parchment, which was miss- 
ing long before your birth. The importance of the 
document in question renders it advisable to neglect 
no possible, even if improbable, method of regaining 
it. You will therefore oblige me, my dear Alice, by 
answering this person’s inquiries, and complying with 
his lawful and reasonable requests, so far as they may 
appear to have the aforesaid object in view. As I 
shall remain in the room, you need apprehend no rude 
nor unbecoming deportment, on the young man’s part; 


and, at your slightest wish, of course, the investiga- 
VOL, IL. 16 


242 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES, 


tion, or whatever we may call it, shall immediately be 
broken off. 

“Mistress Alice Pyncheon,”’ remarked Matthew 
Maule, with the utmost deference, but yet a half-hid- 
den sarcasm in his look and tone, ‘** will no doubt feel 
herself quite safe in her father’s presence, and under 
his all-sufficient protection.” 

“T certainly shall entertain no manner of apprehen- 
sion, with my father at hand,” said Alice, with maid- 
enly dignity. ‘Neither do I conceive that a lady, 
while true to herself, can have aught to fear from 
whomsoever, or in any circumstances ! ” 

Poor Alice! By what unhappy impulse did she 
thus put herself at once on terms of defiance against 
a strength which she could not estimate ? 

“Then, Mistress Alice,” said Matthew Maule, hand- 
ing a chair, — gracefully enough, for a craftsman, — 
‘“‘ will it please you only to sit down, and do me the 
favor (though altogether beyond a poor carpenter’s 
deserts) to fix your eyes on mine!” 

Alice complied. She was very proud. Setting 
aside all advantages of rank, this fair girl deemed 
herself conscious of a power —combined of beauty, 
high, unsullied purity, and the preservative force of 
womanhood —that could make her sphere impenetra- 
ble, unless betrayed by treachery within. She in- 
stinctively knew, it may be, that some sinister or evil 
potency was now striving to pass her barriers; nor 
would she decline the contest. So Alice put woman’s 
might against man’s might; a match not often equal 
on the part of woman. 

Her father meanwhile had turned away, and seemed 
absorbed in the contemplation of a landscape by Claude, 
where a shadowy and sun-streaked vista penetrated so 


ALICE PYNCHEON. 243 


cemotely into an ancient wood, that it would have been 
no wonder if his fancy had lost itself in the picture’s 
bewildering depths. But, in truth, the picture was no 
more to him at that moment than the blank wall 
against which it hung. His mind was haunted with 
the many and strange tales which he had heard, at 
tributing mysterious if not supernatural endowments 
to these Maules, as well the grandson here present as 
his two immediate ancestors. Mr. Pyncheon’s long 
residence abroad, and intercourse with men of wit and 
fashion, — courtiers, worldlings, and free-thinkers, — 
had done much towards obliterating the grim Puritan 
superstitions, which no man of New England birth at 
that early period could entirely escape. But, on the 
other hand, had not a whole community believed 
Maule’s grandfather to be a wizard? Had not the 
crime been proved? Had not the wizard died for it ? 
Had he not bequeathed a legacy of hatred against the 
Pyncheons to this only grandson, who, as it appeared, 
was now about to exercise a subtle influence over the 
daughter of his enemy’s house? Might not this in- 
fluence be the same that was called witchcraft ? 

Turning half around, he caught a glimpse of Maule’s 
figure in the looking-glass. At some paces from Alice, 
with his arms uplifted in the air, the carpenter made a 
gesture as if directing downward a slow, ponderous, 
and invisible weight upon the maiden. 

“Stay, Maule!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon, stepping 
forward. “I forbid your proceeding further !” 

“‘ Pray, my dear father, do not interrupt the young 
man,” said Alice, without changing her position. “ His 
efforts, I assure you, will prove very harmless.” 

Again Mr. Pyncheon turned his eyes towards the 
Claude. It was then his daughter’s will, in opposition 


244 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


to his own, that the experiment should be fully tried 
Henceforth, therefore, he did but consent, not urge it 
And was it not for her sake far more than for his 
own that he desired its success? That lost parch- 
ment once restored, the beautiful Alice Pyncheon, with 
the rich dowry which he could then bestow, might wed 
an English duke or a German reigning-prince, instead. 
of some New England clergyman or lawyer! At the 
thought, the ambitious father almost consented, in his 
heart, that, if the devil’s power were needed to the ac- 
complishment of this great object, Maule might evoke 
him. Alice’s own purity would be her safeguard. 

With his mind full of imaginary magnificence, Mr. 
Pyncheon heard a half-uttered exclamation from his 
daughter. It was very faint and low; so indistinct 
that there seemed but half a will to shape out the 
words, and too undefined a purport to be intelligible. 
Yet it was a call for help! — his conscience never 
doubted it ;— and, little more than a whisper to his 
ear, it was a dismal shriek, and long reéchoed’ so, in 
the region round his heart! But this time the father 
did not turn. 

After a further interval, Maule spoke. 

“ Behold your daughter!” said he. 

Mr. Pyncheon came hastily forward. The carpenter 
was atanding erect in front of Alice’s chair, and point. 
ing his finger towards the maiden with an expression ~ 
of triumphant power the limits of which could not bi 
defined, as, indeed, its scope stretched vaguely towards 
the unseen and the infinite. Alice sat in an attitude 
of profound repose, with the long brown lashes droop- 
ing over her eyes. 

‘There she is!” said the carpenter. “Speak tc 
jer!” 


ALICE PYNCHEON. 245 


“ Alice! My daughter!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon. 

My own Alice!” 

She did not stir. 

“Louder!” said Maule, smiling. 

“ Alice! Awake!” cried her father. “It troubles 
me to see you thus! Awake!” 

He spoke loudly, with terror in his voice, and close 
to that delicate ear which had always been so sensitive 
to every discord. But the sound evidently reached 
her not. It is indescribable what a sense of remote, 
dim, unattainable distance, betwixt himself and Alice, 
was impressed on the father by this impossibility of 
reaching her with his voice. 

‘“‘ Best touch her!” said Matthew Maule. “ Shake 
the girl, and roughly too! My hands are hardened 
with too much use of axe, saw, and plane, — else I 
might help you!” 

Mr. Pyncheon took her hand, and pressed it with 
the earnestness of startled emotion. He kissed her, 
with so great a heart-throb in the kiss, that he thought 
she must needs feel it. Then, in a gust of anger at 
her insensibility, he shook her maiden form with a 
violence which, the next moment, it affrighted him to 
remember. He withdrew his encircling arms, and 
Alice — whose figure, though flexible, had been wholly 
impassive — relapsed into the same attitude as before 
these attempts to arouse her. Maule having shifted 
his position, her face was turned towards him slightly, 
but with what seemed to be a reference of her very 
slumber to his guidance. 

Then it was a strange sight to behold how the man 
of conventionalities shook the powder out of his pert 
wig; how the reserved and stately gentleman forgot 
his dignity ; how the gold-embroidered waistcoat flick 


246 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABZES. 


ered and glistened in the firelight with the convulsion 
of rage, terror, and sorrow in the human heart that 
was beating under it. 

“ Villain!” cried Mr. Pyncheon, shaking his 
clenched fist at Maule. ‘You and the fiend together 
have robbed me of my daughter! Give her back, 
spawn of the old wizard, or you shall climb Gallows 
Hill in your grandfather’s footsteps !” 

“ Softly, Mr. Pyncheon!” said the carpenter, with 
scornful composure. ‘Softly, an it please your wor- 
ship, else you will spoil those rich lace ruffles at your 
wrists! Is it my crime if you have sold your daughter 
for the mere hope of getting a sheet of yellow parch- 
ment into your clutch? There sits Mistress Alice 
quietly asleep! Now let Matthew Maule try whether 
she be as proud as the carpenter found her awhile 
since.” 

He spoke, and Alice responded, with a soft, sub- 
dued, inward acquiescence, and a bending of her form 
towards him, like the flame of a torch when it indi 
cates a gentle draught of air. He beckoned with his 
hand, and, rising from her chair, — blindly, but un- 
doubtingly, as tending to her sure and inevitable cen- 
tre,— the proud Alice approached him. He waved 
her back, and, retreating, Alice sank again into her 
seat. 

“She is mine!”’ said Matthew. Maule. ‘ Mine, by 
the right of the strongest spirit!” 

In the further progress of the legend, there is a 
long, grotesque, and occasionally awe-striking account 
of the carpenter’s incantations (if so they are to be 
called), with a view of discovering the lost document. 
It appears to have been his object to convert the mind 
of Alice into a kind of telescopic medium, through 


ALICE PYNCHEON. 2AT 


which Mr. Pyncheon and himself might obtain a 
glimpse into the spiritual world. He succeeded, ac. 
cordingly, in holding an imperfect sort of intercourse, 
at one remove, with the departed personages, in whose 
custody the so much valued secret had been carried 
beyond the precincts of earth. During her trance, 
Alice described three figures as being present to her 
spiritualized perception. One was an aged, dignified, 
stern-looking gentleman, clad as for a solemn festival 
in grave and costly attire, but with a great bloodstain 
on his richly wrought band ; the second, an aged man, 
meanly dressed, with a dark and malign countenance, 
and a broken halter about his neck; the third, a per- 
son not so advanced in life as the former two, but be- 
yond the middle age, wearing a coarse woollen tunic 
and leather breeches, and with a carpenter’s rule stick- 
ing out of his side pocket. These three visionary 
characters possessed a mutual knowledge of the miss- 
ing document. One of them, in truth, —it was he 
with the blood-stain on his band, — seemed, unless his 
gestures were misunderstood, to hold the parchment 
in his immediate keeping, but was prevented, by his 
two partners in the mystery, from disburdening him- 
self of the trust. Finally, when he showed a purpose 
of shouting forth the secret, loudly enough to be heard 
from his own sphere into that of mortals, his compan- 
ions struggled with him, and pressed their hands over 
his mouth; and forthwith — whether that he were 
choked by it, or that the secret itself was of a crim- 
son hue — there was a fresh flow of blood upon his 
band. Upon this, the two meanly dressed figures 
mocked and jeered at the much-abashed old dignitary, 
and pointed their fingers at the stain. 
At this juncture, Maule turned to Mr. Pyncheon. 


248 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


“Tt will never be allowed,” said he. ‘The custody 
of this secret, that would so enrich his heirs, makes 
part of your grandfather’s retribution. He must choke 
with it until it is no longer of any value. And keep 
you the House of the Seven Gables! It is too dear 
bought an inheritance, and too heavy with the curse 
upon it, to be shifted yet awhile from the Colonel’s 
posterity ! ” 

Mr. Pyncheon tried to speak, but — what with fear 
and passion — could make only a gurgling murmur in 
his throat. The carpenter smiled. 

‘“¢ Aha, worshipful sir! — so, you have old Maule’s 
blood to drink!” said he, jeeringly. 

‘Fiend in man’s shape! why dost thou keep do- 
minion over my child?” cried Mr. Pyncheon, when 
his choked utterance could make way. “Give me 
back my daughter! Then go thy ways; and may we 
never meet again!” 

“Your daughter!” said Matthew Maule. ‘ Why, 
she is fairly mine! Nevertheless, not to be too hard 
with fair Mistress Alice, I will leave her in your keep- 
ing; but I do not warrant you that she shall never 
have occasion to remember Maule, the carpenter.” 

He waved his hands with an upward motion; and, 
after a few repetitions of similar gestures, the beauti- 
ful Alice Pyncheon awoke from: her strange trance. 
She awoke, without the slightest recollection of her 
visionary experience ; but as one losing herself in a 
momentary reverie, and returning to the consciousness 
of actual life, in almost as brief an interval as the 
down-sinking flame of the hearth should quiver again 
up the chimney. On recognizing Matthew Maule, she 
assumed an air of somewhat cold but gentle dignity, 
‘he rather, as there was a certain peculiar smile on the 


ALICE PYNCHEON. 249 


earpenter’s visage that stirred the native pride of the 
fair Alice. So ended, for that time, the quest for the 
lost title-deed of the Pyncheon territory at the East- 
ward; nor, though often subsequently renewed, has it 
ever yet befallen a Pyncheon to set his eye upox that 
parchment. 

But, alas for the beautiful, the gentle, yet too 
haughty Alice! A power that she little dreamed of 
had laid its grasp upon her maiden soul. A will, most 
unlike her own, constrained her to do its grotesque 
and fantastic bidding. Her father, as it proved, had 
martyred his poor child to an inordinate desire for 
measuring his land by miles instead of acres. And, 
therefore, while Alice Pyncheon lived, she was Maule’s 
slave, in a bondage more humiliating, a thousand-fold, 
than that which binds its chain around the body. 
Seated by his humble fireside, Maule had but to wave 
his hand ; and, wherever the proud lady chanced to 
be, — whether in her chamber, or entertaining her 
father’s stately guests, or worshipping at church, — 
whatever her place or occupation, her spirit passed 
from beneath her own control, and bowed itself to 
Maule. “ Alice, laugh!’ — the carpenter, beside his 
hearth, would say ; or perhaps intensely will it, with- 
out a spoken word. And, even were it prayer-time, 
or at a funeral, Alice must break into wild laughter. 
“ Alice, be sad!”? —and, at the instant, down would 
come her tears, quenching all the mirth of those 
around her like sudden rain upon a bonfire. “ Alice, 
dance!” — and dance she would, not in such court- 
like measures as she had learned abroad, but some 
high-paced jig, or hop-skip rigadoon, befitting the 
brisk lasses at a rustic merry-making. It seemed to 
Ye Maule’s impulse, not to ruin Alice, nor to visit her 


250 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


with any black or gigantic mischief, which would have 
crowned her sorrows with the grace of tragedy, but to 
wreak a low, ungenerous scorn upon her. Thus all 
the dignity of life was lost. She felt herself too much 
abased, and longed to change natures with some 
worm ! 

One evening, at a bridal-party (but not her own; 
for, so lost from self-control, she wouid have deemed 
it sin to marry), poor Alice was beckoned forth by her 
unseen despot, and constrained, in her gossamer white 
dress and satin slippers, to hasten along the street 
to the mean dwelling of a laboring-man. There was 
laughter and good cheer within ; for Matthew Maule, 
that night, was to wed the laborer’s daughter, and had 
summoned proud Alice Pyncheon to wait upon his 
bride. And so she did; and when the twain were 
one, Alice awoke out of her enchanted sleep. Yet, no 
longer proud, — humbly, and with a smile all steeped 
in sadness, — she kissed Maule’s wife, and went her 
way. It was an inclement night; the southeast wind 
drove the mingled snow and rain into her thinly shel- 
tered bosom ; her satin slippers were wet through and 
through, as she trod the muddy sidewalks. The next 
day a cold; soon, a settled cough; anon, a hectic 
cheek, a wasted form, that sat beside the harpsichord, 
and filled the house with music! Music, in which a 
strain of the heavenly choristers was echoed! Oh, joy! 
For Alice had borne her last humiliation! Oh, greater 
joy! For Alice was penitent of her one earthly sim 
and proud no more! 

The Pyncheons made a great funeral for Alice. 
The kith and kin were there, and the whole respecta- 
bility of the town besides. But, last in the procession, 
came Matthew Maule, gnashing his teeth, as if he 


ALICE PYNCHEON. 251 


would have bitten his own heart in twain, — the dark. 
est and wofullest man that ever walked behind a 
corpse! He meant to humble Alice, not to kill her; 
but he had taken a woman’s delicate soul into his rude 
gripe, to play with — and she was dead ! 


XIV. 
PHEBE’S GOOD-BY. 


HO.eRAVE, plunging into his tale with the energy 
and absorption natural to a young author, had given a 
good deal of action to the parts capable of being de- 
veloped and exemplified in that manner. He now ob- 
served that a certain remarkable drowsiness (wholly 
unlike that with which the reader possibly feels him- 
self affected) had been flung over the senses of his 
auditress. It was the effect, unquestionably, of the 
mystic gesticulations by which he had sought to bring 
bodily before Phcebe’s perception the figure of the 
mesmerizing carpenter. With the lids drooping over 
her eyes, — now lifted for an instant, and drawn down 
again as with leaden weights, — she leaned slightly to- 
wards him, and seemed almost to regulate her breath 
by his. Holgrave gazed at her, as he rolled up his 
manuscript, and recognized an incipient stage of that 
curious psychological condition, which, as he had him- 
self told Phcebe, he possessed more than an ordinary 
faculty of producing. A veil was beginning to be 
muffled about her, in which she could behold only 
him, and live only in his thoughts and emotions. His 
glance, as he fastened it on the young girl, grew invol- 
untarily more concentrated ; in his attitude there was 
the consciousness of power, investing his hardly ma- 
ture figure with a dignity that did not belong to its 
physical manifestation. It was evident, that, with but 


PHGBE’S GOOD-BY. 253 


one wave of his hand and ‘a corresponding effort of 
his will, he could complete his mastery over Phcebe’s 
yet free and virgin spirit: he could establish an influ- 
ence over this good, pure, and simple child, as danger- 
ous, and perhaps as disastrous, as that which the car- 
penter of his legend had acquired and exercised over 
the ill-fated Alice. 

To a disposition like Holgrave’s, at once speculative 
and active, there is no temptation so great as the op- 
portunity of acquiring empire over the human spirit; 
nor any idea more seductive to a young man than to 
become the arbiter of a young girl’s destiny. Let us, 
therefore,— whatever his defects of nature and edu- 
cation, and in spite of his scorn for creeds and insti- 
tutions, — concede to the daguerreotypist the rare and 
high quality of reverence for another’s individuality. 
Let us allow him integrity, also, forever after to be 
confided in; since he forbade himself to twine that 
one link more which might have rendered his spell 
over Pheebe indissoluble. 

He made a slight gesture upward with his hand. 

“ You really mortify me, my dear Miss Phebe!” 
he exclaimed, smiling half-sarcastically at her. ‘ My 
poor story, it is but too evident, will never do fcr 
Godey or Graham! Only think of your falling asleep 
at what I hoped the newspaper critics would pronounce 
a most brilliant, powerful, imaginative, pathetic, and 
original winding up! Well, the manuscript must serve 
to light lamps with; — if, indeed, being so imbued 
with my gentle dulness, it is any longer capable of 
flame!” 

“Me asleep! How can you say so?” answered 
Pheebe, as unconscious of the crisis through which she 
bad passed as an infant of the precipice to the verge 


254 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


of which it has rolled. “No, no! I consider myself 
as having been very attentive ; and, though I don’t re- 
member the incidents quite distinctly, yet I have an 
impression of a vast deal of trouble and calamity, — 
so, no doubt, the story will prove exceedingly attrac 
tive.” 

By this time the sun had gone down, and was tint- 
ing the clouds towards the zenith with those bright 
hues which are not seen there until some time after 
sunset, and when the horizon has quite lost its richer 
brilliancy. The moon, too, which had long been climb- 
ing overhead, and unobtrusively melting its disk into 
the azure, — like an ambitious demagogue, who hides 
his aspiring purpose by assuming the prevalent hue of 
popular sentiment, — now began to shine out, broad 
and oval, in its middle pathway. These silvery beams 
were already powerful enough to change the character 
of the lingering daylight. They softened and embel- 
lished the aspect of the old house ; although the shad- 
ows fell deeper into the angles of its many gables, and 
lay brooding under the projecting story, and within 
the half-open door. With the lapse of every moment, 
the garden grew more picturesque ; the fruit-trees, 
shrubbery, and flower-bushes had a dark obscurity 
among them. The commonplace characteristics — 
which, at noontide, it seemed to have taken a century 
of sordid life to accumulate — were now transfigured 
by a charm of romance. A hundred mysterious years 
were whispering among the leaves, whenever the slight 
sea-breeze found its way thither and stirred them. 
Through the foliage that roofed the little summer- 
house the moonlight flickered to and fro, and fell 
silvery white on the dark floor, the table, and the 
eircular bench, with a continual shift and play, ac. 


PHQGBE’S GOOD-BY. 255 


cording as the chinks and wayward crevices among 
the twigs admitted or shut out the glimmer. 

So sweetly cool was the atmosphere, after all the 
feverish day, that the summer eve might be fancied as 
sprinkling dews and liquid moonlight, with a dash of 
icy temper in them, out of a silver vase. Here and 
there, a few drops of this freshness were scattered on 
a human heart, and gave it youth again, and sympathy 
with the eternal youth of nature. The artist chanced 
to be one on whom the reviving influence fell. It 
made him feel — what he sometimes almost forgot, 
thrust so early as he had been into the rude struggle 
of man with man — how youthful he still was. 

“It seems to me,” he observed, “that I never 
watched the coming of so beautiful an eve, and never 
felt anything so very much like happiness as at this 
moment. After all, what a good world we live in! 
How good, and beautiful! How young it is, too, with 
nothing really rotten or age-worn in it! This old 
house, for example, which sometimes has positively op- 
pressed my breath with its smell of decaying timber! 
And this garden, where the black mould always clings 
to my spade, as if I were a sexton delving in a grave- 
yard! Could I keep the feeling that now possesses 
me, the garden would every day be virgin soil, with 
the earth’s first freshness in the flavor of its beans and 
squashes ; and the house! —it would be like a bower 
in Eden, blossoming with the earliest roses that God 
ever made. Moonlight, and the sentiment in man’s 
heart responsive to it, are the greatest of renovators 
and reformers. And all other reform and renovation, 
I suppose, will prove to be no better than moon- 
shine! ” 

“JT have been happier than I am now; at least, 


2956 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


much gayer,” said Phebe, thoughtfully. “ Yet I am 
sensible of a great charm in this brightening moon- 
light; and I love to watch how the day, tired as it is, 
lags away reluctantly, and hates to be called yester. 
day so soon. I never cared much about moonlight 
before. What is there, I wonder, so beautiful in it, 
to-night ?”’ 

«¢ And you have never felt it before?” inquired the 
artist, looking earnestly at the girl through the twi- 
light. 

‘“‘ Never,” answered Phoebe; “and life does not look 
the same, now that I have felt it so. It seems as if I 
had looked at everything, hitherto, in broad daylight, 
or else in the ruddy light of a cheerful fire, glimmer- 
ing and dancing through a room. Ah, poor me!” she 
added, with a half-melancholy laugh. “I shall never 
be so merry as before I knew Cousin Hepzibah and 
poor Cousin Clifford. I have grown a great deal 
older, in this little time. Older, and, I hope, wiser, 
and, —not exactly sadder, — but, certainly, with not 
half so much lightness in my spirits! I have given 
them my sunshine, and have been glad to give it; but, 
of course, I cannot both give and keep it. They are 
welcome, notwithstanding !” 

“You have lost nothing, Phcebe, worth keeping, nor 
which it was possible to keep,” said Holgrave, after a 
pause. ‘Our first youth is of no value; for we are 
never conscious of it until after it is gone. But 
sometimes — always, I suspect, unless one is exceed. 
ingly unfortunate —there comes a sense of second 
youth, gushing out of the heart’s joy at being in love; 
or, possibly, it may come to crown some other grand 
festival in life, if any other such there be. This be 
moaning of one’s self (as you do now) over the first 


PHG@BE’S GOOD-BY. 25% 


zareless, shallow gayety of youth departed, and this 
profound happiness at youth regained,—so mucl 
deeper and richer than that we lost, — are essential tc 
the soul’s development. In some cases, the two states 
come almost simultaneously, and mingle the sadness 
and the rapture in one mysterious emotion.” 

*‘ hardly think I understand you,” said Pheebe. 

“No wonder,” replied Holgrave, smiling; “for ¥ 
have told you a secret which I hardly began to know 
before I found myself giving it utterance. Remember 
it, however ; and when the truth becomes clear to you, 
then think of this moonlight scene!” 

“Tt is entirely moonlight now, except only a little 
flush of faint crimson, upward from the west, between 
those buildings,” remarked Phebe. “I must go in. 
Cousin Hepzibah is not quick at figures, and will give 
herself a headache over the day’s accounts, unless I 
help her.” 

But Holgrave detained her a little longer. 

“Miss Hepzibah tells me,” observed he, “that you. 
return to the country in a few days.” 

“ Yes, but only for a little while,” answered Phebe; 
“for I look upon this as my present home. I go to 
make a few arrangements, and to take a more deliber- 
ate leave of my mother and friends. It is pleasant to 
live where one is much desired and very useful; and 
I think I may have the satisfaction of feeling myself 
so here.” 

“You surely may, and more than you imagine,” 
said the artist. ‘ Whatever health, comfort, and 
natural life exists in the house, is embodied in your 
person. These blessings came along with you, and 
will vanish when you leave the threshold. Miss Hep- 
zibah, by secluding herself from society, has lost all 


VOL. Ii. Nee 


2958 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


true relation with it, and is, in fact, dead; although 
she galvanizes herself into a semblance of life, and 
stands behind her counter, afflicting the world with a 
greatly -to-be-deprecated scowl. Your poor cousin 
Clifford is another dead and long-buried person, on 
whom the governor and council have wrought a necro- 
mantic miracle. I should not wonder if he were tc 
crumble away, some morning, after you are gone, and 
nothing be seen of him more, except a heap of dust. 
Miss Hepzibah, at any rate, will lose what little flex- 
ibility she has. They both exist by you.” 

“TI should be very sorry to think so,” answered 
Pheebe, gravely. ‘But it is true that my small abil- 
ities were precisely what they needed ; and I have a 
real interest in their welfare, — an odd kind of moth- 
erly sentiment, — which I wish you would not laugh 
at! And let me tell you frankly, Mr. Holgrave, I 
am sometimes puzzled to know whether you wish them 
well or ill.” 

‘‘Undoubtedly,” said the daguerreotypist, “I do 
feel an interest in this antiquated, poverty-stricken old 
maiden lady, and this degraded and shattered gentle- 
man, — this abortive lover of the beautiful. A kindly 
interest, too, helpless old children that they are! But 
you have no conception what a different kind of heart 
mine is from your own. It is not my impulse, as re- 
gards these two individuals, either to help or hinder; 
but to look on, to analyze, to explain matters to my- 
self, and to comprehend the drama which, for almost 
two hundred years, has been dragging its slow length 
over the ground where you and I now tread. If per- 
mitted to witness the close, I doubt not to derive a 
moral satisfaction from it, go matters how they may. 
There is a conviction within me that the end draws 


PH@BE’S GOOD-BY. 259 


nigh. But, though Providence sent you hither to help, 
and sends me only as a privileged and meet spectator, 
I pledge myself to lend these unfortunate beings what- 
ever aid I can!” 

“T wish you would speak more plainly,” cried 
Phebe, perplexed and displeased; “and, above all, 
that you would feel more like a Christian and a 
human being! How is it possible to see people in 
distress, without desiring, more than anything else, to 
help and comfort them? You talk as if this old house 
were a theatre; and you seem to look at Hepzibah’s 
and Clifford’s misfortunes, and those of generations 
before them, as a tragedy, such as I have seen acted 
in the hall of a country hotel, only the present one 
appears to be played exclusively for your amusement. 
I do not like this. The play costs the performers too 
much, and the audience is too cold-hearted.”’ 

“You are severe,” said Holgrave, compelled to 
recognize a degree of truth in this piquant sketch of 
his own mood. 

“And then,” continued Phebe, “what can you 
mean by your conviction, which you tell me of, that 
the end is drawing near? Do you know of any new 
trouble hanging over my poor relatives? If so, tell 
me at once, and I will not leave them!” 

“Forgive me, Phebe!” said the daguerreotypist, 
holding out his hand, to which the girl was constrained 
to yield her own. ‘I am somewhat of a mystic, it 
must be confessed. The tendency is in my blood, 
together with the faculty of mesmerism, which might 
have brought me to Gallows Hill, in the good old 
times of witchcraft. Believe me, if I were really 
aware of any secret, the disclosure of which would 
benefit your friends, who are my own friends, like 


260 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


wise,— you should learn it before we part. But } 
have no such knowledge.” ) 

“You hold something back!” said Phebe. 

“‘ Nothing, —no secrets but my own,” answered 
Holgrave. ‘I can perceive, indeed, that Judge Pyn- 
cheon still keeps his eye on Clifford, in whose ruin 
he had so large a share. His motives and intentions, 
however, are a mystery to me. He is a determined 
and relentless man, with the genuine character of an 
inquisitor; and had he any object to gain by putting 
Clifford to the rack, I verily believe that he would 
wrench his joints from their sockets, in order to ac. 
complish it. But, so wealthy and eminent as he is, — 
so powerful in his own strength, and in the support of 
society on all sides, — what can Judge Pyncheon have 
to hope or fear from the imbecile, branded, half-torpid 
Clifford?” 

“ Yet,” urged Phebe, “ you did speak as if misfor- 
tune were impending!” 

“Oh, that was because I am morbid! ” replied the 
artist. ‘My mind has a twist aside, like almost 
everybody’s mind, except your own. Moreover, it is 
so strange to find myself an inmate of this old Pyn- 
cheon House, and sitting in this old garden — (hark, 
how Maule’s well is murmuring!) — that, were it 
only for this one circumstance, I cannot help fancy- 
ing that Destiny is arranging its fifth act for a catas- 
trophe.”’ 

“There!” cried Phcebe with renewed vexation ; for 
she was by nature as hostile to mystery as the sun- 
shine toa dark corner. ‘* You puzzle me more than 
ever!” 

“Then let us part friends!” said Holgrave, pressing 
ber hand. ‘Or, if not friends, let us part before you 


PHEBE’S GOOD-BY. 261 


entirely hate me. You, who love everybody else in 
the world!” 

“‘ Good-by, then,” said Phoebe, frankly. “I do not 
mean to be angry a great while, and should be sorry 
to have you think so. There has Cousin Hepzibah 
been standing in the shadow of the doorway, this 
quarter of an hour past! She thinks I stay too long 
in the damp garden. So, good-night, and good 
by ! 9? 

On the second morning thereafter, Phebe might 
have been seen, in her straw bonnet, with a shawl on 
one arm and a little carpet-bag on the other, bidding 
adieu to Hepzibah and Cousin Clifford. She was to 
take a seat in the next train of cars, which would 
transport her to within half a dozen miles of her 
country village. 

The tears were in Pheebe’s eyes ; a smile, dewy with 
affectionate regret, was glimmering around her pleas- 
ant mouth. She wondered how it came to pass, that 
her life of a few weeks, here in this heavy-hearted old 
mansion, had taken such hold of her, and so melted 
into her associations, as now to seem a more important 
centre-point of remembrance than all which had gone 
before. How had Hepzibah — grin, silent, and irre- 
sponsive to her overflow of cordial sentiment — con- 
trived to win so much love? And Clifford, —in his 
abortive decay, with the mystery of fearful crime upon 
him, and the close prison-atmosphere yet lurking in 
his breath,— how had he transformed himself inte 
the simplest child, whom Pheebe felt bound to watch 
over, and be, as it were, the providence of his uncon- 
sidered hours! Everything, at that instant of fare- 
well, stood out prominently to her view. Look where 


she would, lay her hand on what she might, the ob 


262 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


ject responded to her consciousness, as if a moist hu 
man heart were in it. 

She peeped from the window into the garden, and 
felt herself more regretful at leaving this spot of black 
earth, vitiated with such an age-long growth of weeds, 
than joyful at the idea of again scenting her pine 
forests and fresh clover-fields. She called Chanticleer 
his two wives, and the venerable chicken, and threw 
them some crumbs of bread from the breakfast-table. 
These being hastily gobbled up, the chicken spread its 
wings, and alighted close by Phebe on the window- 
sill, where it looked gravely into her face and vented 
its emotions in a croak. Phebe bade it be a good old 
chicken during her absence, and promised to bring it 
a little bag of buckwheat. 

“ Ah, Phoebe!” remarked Hepzibah, “you do not 
smile so naturally as when you came to us! Then, the 
smile chose to shine out; now, you choose it should. 
It is well that you are going back, for a little while, 
into your native air. There has been too much weight 
on your spirits. The house is too gloomy and lone- 
some; the shop is full of vexations; and as for me, I 
have no faculty of making things look brighter than 
they are. Dear Clifford has been your only comfort!” 

‘Come hither, Phebe,” suddenly cried her cousin 
Clifford, who had said very little all the morning. 
* Close ! — closer ! — and look me in the face!” 

Phebe put one of her small hands on each elbow of 
his chair, and leaned her face towards him, so that he 
might peruse it as carefully as he would. It is prob. 
able that the latent emotions of this parting hour had 
revived, in some degree, his bedimmed and enfeebled 
faculties. At any rate, Phoebe soon felt that, if not 
the profound insight of a seer, yet a more than fem 


PHGBE’S GOOD-BY. 263 


inine delicacy of appreciation, was making her heart 
the subject of its regard. A moment before, she had 
known nothing which she would have sought to hide. 
Now, as if some secret were hinted to her own con- 
sciousness through the medium of another’s perception, 
she was fain to let her eyelids droop beneath Clifford’s 
gaze. A blush, too, —the redder, because she strove 
hard to keep it down, — ascended higher and higher, 
in a tide of fitful progress, until even her brow was all 
suffused with it. 

“Tt is enough, Phebe,” said Clifford, with a melam 
choly smile. ‘“‘ When I first saw you, you were the 
prettiest little maiden in the world ; and now you have 
deepened into beauty! Girlhood has passed into 
womanhood ; the bud is a bloom! Go, now! —I feel 
lonelier than I did.” 

Pheebe took leave of the desolate couple, and passed 
through the shop, twinkling her eyelids to shake off a 
dew-drop ; for— considering how brief her absence 
was to be, and therefore the folly of being cast down 
about it — she would not so far acknowledge her tears 
as to dry them with her handkerchief. On the door- 
step, she met the little urchin whose marvellous feats 
of gastronomy have been recorded in the earlier pages 
of our narrative. She took from the window some 
specimen or other of natural history, — her eyes be- 
ing too dim with moisture to inform her accurately 
whether it was a rabbit or a hippopotamus, — put it 
into the child’s hand, as a parting gift, and went her 
way. Old Uncle Venner was just coming out of his 
door, with a wood-horse and saw on his shoulder; and, 
trudging along the street, he scrupled not to keep 
company with Phebe, so far as their paths lay to- 
gether ; nor, in spite of his patched coat and rusty 


964 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


beaver, and the curious fashion of his tow-cloth trous 
ers, could she find it in her heart to outwalk him. 

“We shall miss you, next Sabbath afternoon,” ob. 
served the street philosopher. ‘ It is unaccountable 
how little while it takes some folks to grow just as 
natural to a man as his own breath; and, begging 
your pardon, Miss Phceebe (though there can be no 
offence in an old man’s saying it), that’s just what 
you’ve grown tome! My years have been a great 
many, and your life is but just beginning; and yet, 
you are somehow as familiar to me as if I had found 
you at my mother’s door, and you had blossomed, like 
a running vine, all along my pathway since. Come 
back soon, or I shall be gone to my farm; for I begin 
to find these wood-sawing jobs a little too tough for 
my back-ache.” 

“Very soon, Uncle Venner,” replied Phebe. 

** And let it be all the sooner, Phebe, for the sake 
of those poor souls yonder,” continued her compan- 
ion. ‘They can never do without you, now,—never, 
Pheebe, never !— no more than if one of God’s angels 
had been living with them, and making their dismal 
house pleasant and comfortable! Don’t it seem to 
you they ’d be in a sad case, if, some pleasant summer 
morning like this, the angel should spread his wings, 
and fly to the place he came from? Well, just so they 
feel, now that you’re going home by the railroad! 
They can’t bear it, Miss Phebe; so be sure to come 
back!” 

“ T am no angel, Uncle Venner,” said Phebe, smik 
ing, as she offered him her hand at the street-corner, 
** But, I suppose, people never feel so much like am 
gels as when they are doing what little good they may 
So I shall certainly come back!” 








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PHG@BE’S GOOD-BY. 265 


Thus parted the old man and the rosy girl; and 
Pheebe took the wings of the morning, and was soon 
flitting almost as rapidly away as if endowed with the 
aerial locomotion of the angels to whom Uncle Venner 
had so graciously compared her. 


XV. 


THE SCOWL AND SMILE. 


SEVERAL days passed over the Seven Gables, heav- 
ily and drearily enough. In fact (not to attribute the 
whole gloom of sky and earth to the one inauspicious 
circumstance of Phcebe’s departure), an easterly storm 
had set in, and indefatigably applied itself to the task 
of making the black roof and walls of the old house 
look more cheerless than ever before. Yet was the 
outside not half so cheerless as the interior. Poor 
Clifford was cut off, at once, from all his scanty re- 
sources of enjoyment. Phcebe was not there; nor did 
the sunshine fall upon the floor. The garden, with its 
muddy walks, and the chill, dripping foliage of its 
summer-house, was an image to be shuddered at. 
Nothing flourished in the cold, moist, pitiless atmos- 
phere, drifting with the brackish scud of sea-breezes, 
except the moss along the joints of the shingle-roof, 
and the great bunch of weeds, that had lately been 
suffering from drought, in the angle between the twe 
front gables. 

As for Hepzibah, she seemed not merely possessed 
with the east wind, but to be, in her very person, only 
another phase of this gray and sullen spell of weather; 
the east wind itself, grim and disconsolate, in a rusty 
black silk gown, and with a turban of cloud-wreaths 
on its head. The custom of the shop fell off, because 
a story got abroad that she soured her small beer and 


THE SCOWL AND SMILE 26% 


ether damageable commodities, by scowling on them. 
It is, perhaps, true that the public had something 
reasonably to complain of in her deportment; but to- 
wards Clifford she was neither i}-tempered nor un- 
kind, nor felt less warmth of heart than always, had it 
been possible to make it reach him. The inutility of 
her best efforts, however, palsied the poor old gentle- 
woman. She could do little else than sit silently in a 
corner of the room, when the wet pear-tree branches, 
sweeping across the small windows, created a noon-day 
dusk, which Hepzibah unconsciously darkened with 
her woe-begone aspect. It was no fault of Hepzibah’s. 
Everything — even the old chairs and tables, that had 
known what weather was for three or four such life- 
times as her own — looked as damp and chill as if the 
present were their worst experience. The picture of 
the Puritan Colonel shivered on the wall. The house 
itself shivered, from every attic of its seven gables, 
down to the great kitchen fireplace, which served all 
the better as an emblem of the mansion’s heart, be- 
cause, though built for warmth, it was now so com- 
fortless and empty. 

Hepzibah attempted to enliven matters by a fire in 
the parlor. But the storm-demon kept watch above, 
and, whenever a flame was kindled, drove the smoke 
back again, choking the chimney’s sooty throat with 
its own breath. Nevertheless, during four days of 
this miserable storm, Clifford wrapt himself in an old 
cloak, and occupied his customary chair. On the 
morning of the fifth, when summoned to breakfast, he 
responded only by a broken-hearted murmur, expres- 
sive of a determination not to leave his bed. His sis- 
ter made no attempt to change his purpose. In fact, 
entirely as she loved him, Hepzibah could hardly have 


268 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


borne any longer the wretched duty — so impractica 
ble by her few and rigid faculties — of seeking pax 
time for a still sensitive, but ruined mind, critical and 
fastidious, without force or volition. It was, at least, 
something short. of positive despair, that, to-day, she 
might sit shivering alone, and not suffer continually 4 
new grief, and unreasonable pang of remorse, at every 
fitful sigh of her fellow-sufferer. 

But Clifford, it seemed, though he did not make his 
appearance below stairs, had, after all, bestirred him- 
self in quest of amusement. In the course of the fore- 
noon, Hepzibah heard a note of music, which (there 
being no other tuneful contrivance in the House of 
the Seven Gables) she knew must proceed from Alice 
Pyncheon’s harpsichord. She was aware that Clit- 
ford, in his youth, had possessed a cultivated taste for 
music, and a considerable degree of skill in its prac- 
tice. It was difficult, however, to conceive of his re. 
taining an accomplishment to which daily exercise is 
so essential, in the measure indicated by the sweet, 
airy, and delicate, though most melancholy strain, 
that now stole upon her ear. Nor was it less maryel- 
lous that the long-silent instrument should be capable 
of so much melody. Hepzibah involuntarily thought 
of the ghostly harmonies, prelusive of death in the 
family, which were attributed to the legendary Alice. 
But it was, perhaps, proof of the agency of other than 
spiritual fingers, that, after a few touches, the chords 
seemed to snap asunder with their own vibrations, and 
the music ceased. 

But a harsher sound succeeded to the mysterious 
notes 3; nor was the easterly day fated to pass without 
an event sufficient in itself to poison, for Hepzibah 
and Clifford, the balmiest air that ever brought the 


THE SCOWL AND SMILE. 269 


humming-birds along with it. The final echoes of 
AJice Pyncheon’s performance (or Clifford’s, if his 
we must consider it) were driven away by no less vul- 
gar a dissonance than the ringing of the shop-bell. A 
foot was heard scraping itself on the threshold, and 
thence somewhat ponderously stepping on the floor, 
Hepzibah delayed a moment, while muffling herself in 
a faded shawl, which had been her defensive armor in 
a forty years’ warfare against the east wind. A char- 
acteristic sound, however, — neither a cough nor a 
hem, but a kind of rumbling and reverberating spasm 
in somebody’s capacious depth of chest, — impelled 
her to hurry forward, with that aspect of fierce faint- 
heartedness so common to women in cases of perilous 
emergency. Few of her sex, on such occasions, have 
ever looked so terrible as our poor scowling Hepzibah. 
But the visitor quietly closed the shop-door behind 
him, stood up his umbrella against the counter, and 
turned a visage of composed benignity, to meet the 
alarm and anger which his appearance had excited. 

Hepzibah’s presentiment had not deceived her. It 
was no other than Judge Pyncheon, who, after in vain 
trying the front door, had now effected his entrance 
into the shop. 

“How do you do, Cousin Hepzibah ?— and how 
does this most inclement weather affect our poor Clif- 
ford ?” began the Judge; and wonderful it seemed, 
indeed, that the easterly storm was not put to shame, 
or, at any rate, a little mollified, by the genial benev- 
olence of his smile. “I could not rest without calling 
to ask, once more, whether [ can in any manner pro- 
mote his comfort, or your own.” 

“You can do nothing,” said Hepzibah, controlling 
her agitation as well as she could. “I devote myself 


970 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


to Clifford. He has every comfort which his situatior 
admits of.” 

“But allow me to suggest, dear cousin,” rejoined 
the Judge, * you err, —in all affection and kindness, 
no doubt, and with the very best intentions, — but you 
do err, nevertheless, in keeping your brother so se- 
cluded. Why insulate him thus from all sympathy 
and kindness? Clifford, alas! has had too much of 
solitude. Now let him try society, — the society, that 
is to say, of kindred and old friends. Let me, for in- 
stance, but see Clifford, and I will answer for the good 
etfect of the interview.” 

‘You cannot see him,” answered Hepzibah. “ Clif- 
ford has kept his bed since yesterday.” 

“What! How! Is he il?” exclaimed Judge Pyn- 
cheon, starting with what seemed to be angry alarm; 
for the very frown of the old Puritan darkened through 
the room as he spoke. “Nay, then, I must and will 
see him! What if he should die?” 

“He is in no danger of death,” said Hepzibah, — 
and added, with bitterness that she could repress 
no longer, “none; unless he shall be perseeuted to 
death, now, by the same man who long ago attempted 
it 1” 

“Cousin Hepzibah,” said the Judge, with an im- 
pressive earnestness of manner, which grew even te 
tearful pathos as he proceeded, “‘is it possible that you 
do not perceive how unjust, how unkind, how unchris- 
tian, is this constant, this long -continued bitterness 
against me, for a part which I was constrained by duty 
and conscience, by the force of law, and at my own 
peril, toact? What did I do, in detriment to Clifford, 
which it was possible to leave undone? How could 
you, his sister, —if, for your never-ending sorrow, ag 


? 


THE SCOWL AND SMILE. 271 


it has been for mine, you had known what I did, — 
have shown greater tenderness? And do you think, 
cousin, that it has cost me no pang ? —that it has left 
no anguish in my bosom, from that day to this, amidst 
ill the prosperity with which Heaven has blessed me? 
—or that I do not now rejoice, when it is deemed con- 
sistent with the dues of public justice and the welfare 
of society that this dear kinsman, this early friend, 
this nature so delicately and beautifully constituted, — 
so unfortunate, let us pronounce him, and forbear to 
say, so guilty, — that our own Clifford, in fine, should 
be given back to life, and its possibilities of enjoyment? 
Ah, you little know me, Cousin Hepzibah! You little 
know this heart! It now throbs at the thought of 
meeting him! There lives not the human being (ex- 
cept yourself,— and you not more than I) who has 
shed so many tears for Clifford’s calamity! You be- 
hold some of them now. There is none who would so 
delight to promote his happiness! Try me, Hepzi- 
bah ! — try me, cousin ! — try the man whom you have 
treated as your enemy and Clifford’s! —try Jaffrey 
Pyncheon, and you shall find him true, to the heart’s 
core | ”’ 

“Tn the name of Heaven,” cried Hepzibah, provoked 
only to intenser indignation by this outgush of the in- 
estimable tenderness of a stern nature, — “in God’s 
name, whom you insult, and whose power | could al- 
most question, since he hears you utter so many false 
words without palsying your tongue, — give over, I 
beseech you, this loathsome pretence of affection for 
your victim! You hate him! Say so, like a man! 
You cherish, at this moment, some black purpose 
against him in your heart! Speak it out, at once! — 
or, if you hope so to promote it better, hide it till you 


272 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


ean triumph in its success! But never speak again of 
your love for my poor brother! I cannot bear it! 
It will drive me beyond a woman’s decency! It will 
drive me mad! Forbear! Not another word! It 
will make me spurn you! ” 

For once, Hepzibah’s wrath had given her courage. 
She had spoken. But, after all, was this unconquer- 
able distrust of Judge Pyncheon’s integrity, and thi 
utter denial, apparently, of his claim to stand in th 
ring of human sympathies, — were they founded i 
any just perception of his character, or merely the off 
spring of a woman’s unreasonable prejudice, deduced 
from nothing ? 

The Judge, beyond all question, was a man of emi- 
nent respectability. The church acknowledged it; 
the state acknowledged it. It was denied by nobody. 
In all the very extensive sphere of those who knew 
him, whether in his public or private capacities, there 
was not an individual— except Hepzibah, and some 
lawless mystic, like the daguerreotypist, and, possibly, 
a few political opponents — who would have dreamed 
of seriously disputing his claim to a high and honor- 
able place in the world’s regard. Nor (we must do 
him the further justice to say) did Judge Pyncheon 
himself, probably, entertain many or very frequent 
doubts, that his enviable reputation accorded with his 
deserts. His conscience, therefore, usually considered 
the surest witness to a man’s integrity, —his con- 
science, unless it might be for the little space of five 
minutes in the twenty-four hours, or, now and then, 
some black day in the whole year’s circle, — his con 
science bore an accordant testimony with the world’s 
laudatory voice. And yet, strong as this evidence may 
seem to be, we should hesitate to peril our own con 








“YOU CHERISH, AT THIS MOMENT, SOME BLACK 
PURPOSE AGAINST HIM IN YOUR HEART!” 


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THE SCOWL AND SMILE. 273 


science on the assertion, that the Judge and the con: 
senting world were right, and that poor Hepzibah, 
with her solitary prejudice was wrong. Hidden fror 
mankind, — forgotten by himself, or buried so deeply 
under a sculptured and ornamented pile of ostenta- 
tious deeds that his daily life could take no note of it, 
—there may have lurked some evil and unsightly 
thing. Nay, we could almost venture to say, further, 
that a daily guilt might have been acted by him, ccn- 
tinually renewed, and reddening forth afresh, like 
the miraculous blood-stain of a murder, without his 
nccessarily and at every moment being aware of it. 
Men of strong minds, great force of character, and 
a hard texture of the sensibilities, are very capable of 
falling into mistakes of this kind. They are ordinarily 
men to whom forms are of paramount importance. 
Their field of action lies among the external phenom- 
ena of life. They possess vast ability in grasping, 
and arranging, and appropriating to themselves, the 
big, heavy, solid unrealities, such as gold, landed es- 
tate, offices of trust and emolument, and public honors. 
With these materials, and with deeds of goodly as- 
pect, done in the public eye, an individual of this 
class builds up, as it were, a tall and stately edifice, 
which, in the view of other people, and ultimately in 
his own view, is no other than the man’s character, or 
the man himself. Behold, therefore, a palace! Its 
splendid halls, and suites of spacious apartments, are 
floored with a mosaic-work of costly marbles; its 
windows, the whole height of each room, admit the 
sunshine through the most transparent of plate-glass ; 
its high cornices are gilded, and its ceilings gorgeously 
painted ; and a lofty dome — through which, from the 


central pavement, you may gaze up to the sky, as with 
VOL. ML 18 


274 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


no obstructing medium between — surmounts the 
whole. With what fairer and nobler emblem could 
any man desire to shadow forth his character? Ah! 
but in some low and obscure nook, — some narrow 
closet on the ground-floor, shut, locked and bolted, 
and the key flung away, — or beneath the marble 
pavement, in a stagnant water-puddle, with the richest 
pattern of mosaic-work above, — may lie a corpse, 
half decayed, and still decaying, and diffusing its 
death-scent all through the palace! The inhabitant 
will not be conscious of it, for it has long been his 
daily breath! Neither will the visitors, for they smell 
only the rich odors which the master sedulously scat- 
ters through the palace, and the incense which they 
bring, and delight to burn before him! Now and then, 
perchance, comes in a seer, before whose sadly gifted 
eye the whole structure melts into thin air, leaving 
only the hidden nook, the bolted closet, with the cob- 
webs festooned over its forgotten door, or the deadly 
hole under the pavement, and the decaying corpse 
within. Here, then, we are to seek the true emblem 
of the man’s character, and of the deed that gives 
whatever reality it possesses to his life. And, beneath 
the show of a marble palace, that pool of stagnant 
water, foul with many impurities, and, perhaps, tinged 
with blood, — that secret abomination, above which, 
possibly, he may say his prayers, without remember- 
ing it, —— is this man’s miserable soul ! 

To apply this train of remark somewhat more closely 
to Judge Pyncheon. We might say (without in the 
least imputing crime to a personage of his eminent 
cespectability) that there was enough of splendid rub- 
bish in his life to cover up and paralyze a more active 
and subtile conscience than the Judge was ever troubled 


THE SCOWL AND SMILE. 278 


with. The purity of his judicial character, while on 
the bench; the faithfulness of his public service in 
subsequent capacities ; his devotedness to his party, 
and the rigid consistency with which he had adhered 
to its principles, or, at all events, kept pace with its 
organized movements ; his remarkable zeal as pres- 
ident of a Bible society ; his unimpeachable integrity 
as treasurer of a widow’s and orphan’s fund; his 
benefits to horticulture, by producing two much -es- 
teemed varieties of the pear, and to agriculture, through 
the agency of the famous Pyncheon bull ; the cleanli- 
ness of his moral deportment, for a great many years 
past ; the severity with which he had frowned upon, 
and finally cast off, an expensive and dissipated son, 
delaying forgiveness until within the final quarter 
of an hour of the young man’s life; his prayers at 
morning and eventide, and graces at meal-time ; his 
efforts in furtherance of the temperance cause ; his 
confining himself, since the last attack of the gout, to 
five diurnal glasses of old sherry wine; the snowy 
whiteness of his linen, the polish of his boots, the hand- 
someness of his gold-headed cane, the square and roomy 
fashion of his coat, and the fineness of its material, 
and, in general, the studied propriety of his dress and 
equipment ; the scrupulousness with which he paid 
public notice, in the street, by a bow, a lifting of the 
hat, a nod, or a motion of the hand, to all and sundry 
of his acquaintances, rich or poor; the smile of broad 
benevolence wherewith he made it a point to gladden 
the whole world, — what room could possibly be found 
for darker traits in a portrait made up of lineaments 
like these? This proper face was what he beheld in 
the looking-glass. This admirably arranged lfe was 
what he was conscious of in the progress of every day. 


276 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


Then, might not he claim to be its result and sum, and 
say to himself and the community, “ Behold Judge 
Pyncheon there” ? 

And allowing that, many, many years ago, in his 
early and reckless youth, he had committed some one 
wrong act, — or that, even now, the inevitable force 
of circumstances should occasionally make him do one 
questionable deed among a thousand praiseworthy, or, 
at least, blameless ones, — would you characterize the 
Judge by that one necessary deed, and that half-for- 
gotten act, and let it overshadow the fair aspect of a 
lifetime? What is there so ponderous in evil, that a 
thumb’s bigness of it should outweigh the mass of 
things not evil which were heaped into the other scale! 
This scale and balance system is a favorite one with 
people of Judge Pyncheon’s brotherhood. A hard, 
cold man, thus unfortunately situated, seldom or never 
looking inward, and resolutely taking his idea of 
himself from what purports to be his image as re- 
flected in the mirror of public opinion, can scarcely 
arrive at true self-knowledge, except through loss of 
property and reputation. Sickness will not always 
help him do it ; not always the death-hour! 

But our affair now is with Judge Pyncheon as he 
stood confronting the fierce outbreak of Hepzibah’s 
wrath. Without premeditation, to her own surprise, 
and indeed terror, she had given vent, for once, to 
the inveteracy of her resentment, cherished against 
this kinsman for thirty years. 

Thus far the Judge’s countenance had expressed 
mild forbearance, — grave and almost gentle depreca< 
tion of his cousin’s unbecoming violence, — free and 
Christian-like forgiveness of the wrong inflicted by 
ber words. But when those words were irrevocably 


THE SCOWL AND SMILE. 27% 


spoken his look assumed sternness, the sense of power, 
and immitigable resolve ; and this with so natural and 
imperceptible a change, that it seemed as if the iron 
man had stood there from the first, and the meek man 
not at all. The effect was as when the light, vapory 
clouds, with their soft coloring, suddenly vanish from 
the stony brow of a precipitous mountain, and leave 
there the frown which you at once feel to be eternal. 
Hepzibah almost adopted the insane belief that it was 
her old Puritan ancestor, and not the modern Judge, 
on whom she had just been wreaking the bitterness of 
her heart. Never did a man show stronger proof of 
the lineage attributed to him than Judge Pyncheon, at 
this crisis, by his unmistakable resemblance to the pic- 
fure in the inner room. 

“¢ Cousin Hepzibah,” said he, very calmly, “it is time 
to have done with this.” 

“‘ With all my heart!” answered she. ‘Then, why 
do you persecute us any longer? Leave poor Clifford 
and me in peace. Neither of us desires anything 
better!” 

“‘ It is my purpose to see Clifford before I leave this 
house,” continued the Judge. ‘* Do not act like a mad- 
woman, Hepzibah! I am his only friend, and an all- 
powerful one. Has it never occurred to you, —are 
you so blind as not to have seen, — that, without not 
nerely my consent, but my efforts, my representations, 

‘ae exertion of my whole influence, political, official, 
personal, Clifford would never have been what you 
vall free? Did you think his release a triumph over 
me? Not so, my good cousin ; not so, by any means! 
The furthest possible from that! No; but it was the 
accomplishment of a purpose long entertained on my 
part. I set him free!” 


2:8 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


“You!” answered Hepzibah. “I never will be 
lieve it! He owed his dungeon to you; his freedom 
to God’s providence! ” | 

“‘T set him free!” reaffirmed Judge Pyncheon, with 
the calmest composure. ‘And I came hither now to 
decide whether he shall retain his freedom. It will 
depend upon himself. For this purpose, 1 must see 
him.” 

“‘Never !—it would drive him mad!” exclaimed 
Hepzibah, but with an irresoluteness sufficiently per- 
ceptible to the keen eye of the Judge; for, without 
the slightest faith in his good intentions, she knew not 
whether there was most to dread in yielding or re- 
sistance. ‘And why should you wish to see this 
wretched, broken man, who retains hardly a fraction 
of his intellect, and will hide even that from an eye 
which has no love in it?” 

*¢ He shall see love enough in mine, if that be all!” 
said the Judge, with well-grounded confidence in the 
benignity of his aspect. ‘“ But, Cousin Hepzibah, you 
confess a great deal, and very much to the purpose. 
Now, listen, and I will frankly explain my reasons for 
insisting on this interview. At the death, thirty years 
since, of our uncle Jaffrey, it was found, —I know 
not whether the circumstance ever attracted much of 
your attention, among the sadder interests that clus- 
tered round that event, — but it was found that his 
visible estate, of every kind, fell far short of any es- 
timate ever made of it. He was supposed to be im- 
mensely rich. Nobody doubted that he stood among 
the weightiest men of his day. It was one of his eccen- 
tricities, however, — and not altogether a folly, neither, 
to conceal the amount of his property by making 
distant and foreign investments, perhaps under other 


THE SCOWL AND SMILE. 279 


names than his own, and by various means, familiar 
enough to capitalists, but unnecessary here to be speci- 
fied. By Uncle Jaffrey’s last will and testament, as 
you are aware, his entire property was bequeathed to 
me, with the single exception of a life interest to your- 
self in this old family mansion, and the strip of patri- 
nonial estate remaining attached to it.” 

“ And do you seek to deprive us of that?” asked 
Hepzibah, unable to restrain her bitter contempt. “Is 
this your price for ceasing to persecute poor Clif- 
ford ?”’ 

“Certainly not, my dear cousin!” answered the 
Judge, smiling benevolently. ‘On the contrary, as 
you must do me the justice to own, I have constantly 
expressed my readiness to double or treble your re- 
sources, whenever you should make up your mind to 
accept any kindness of that nature at the hands of 
your kinsman. No,no! But here lies the gist of the 
matter. Of my uncle’s unquestionably great estate, as 
I have said, not the half — no, not one third, as I am 
fully convinced — was apparent after his death. Now, 
I have the best possible reasons for believing that your 
brother Clifford can give me a clew to the recovery of 
the remainder.” 

* Clifford ! — Clifford know of any hidden wealth? 
— Clifford have it in his power to make you rich?” 
eried the old gentlewoman, affected with a sense of 
something like ridicule, at the idea. ‘ Impossible! 
You deceive yourself! It is really a thing to laugh 
at!” 

“Tt is as certain as that I stand here!” said Judge 
Pyncheon, striking his gold-headed cane on the floor, 
and at the same time stamping his foot, as if to ex- 
press his conviction the more forcibly by the whole 


280 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


emphasis of his substantial person. ‘Clifford told 
me so himself!” 

“No, no!” exclaimed Hepzibah, incredulously. 
«You are dreaming, Cousin Jaffrey! ” 

“T do not belong to the dreaming class of men,” 
said the Judge, quietly. ‘ Some months before my 
uncle’s death, Clifford boasted to me of the possession 
of the secret of incalculable wealth. His purpose was 
to taunt me, and excite my curiosity. I know it well. 
But, from a pretty distinct recollection of the particu- 
lars of our conversation, I am thoroughly convinced 
that there was truth in what he said. Clifford, at this 
moment, if he chooses, — and choose he must ! — can 
inform me where to find the schedule, the documents, 
the evidences, in whatever shape they exist, of the vast 
amount of Uncle Jaffrey’s missing property. He has 
the secret. His boast was no idle word. It had a di- 
rectness, an emphasis, a particularity, that showed a 
backbone of solid meaning within the mystery of his 
expression.” 

“ But what could have been Clifford’s object,” asked 
Hepzibah, “in concealing it so long?” 

‘“¢ Tt was one of the bad impulses of our fallen na- 
ture,” replied the Judge, turning up his eyes. ‘“ He 
looked upon me as his enemy. He considered me as 
the cause of his overwhelming disgrace, his immi- 
nent peril of death, his irretrievable ruin. There was 
no great probability, therefore, of his volunteering in- 
formation, out of his dungeon, that should elevate 
me still higher on the ladder of prosperity. But 
the moment has now come when he must give up 
his secret.” 

“And what if he should refuse?” inquired Hepzi. 
bah. ‘‘Or,—as I steadfastly believe, — what if he 


has vo knowledge of this wealth ?” 


THE SCOWL AND SMILE. Ass | 


*My dear cousin,” said Judge Pyncheon, with a 
quietude which he had the power of making more for- 
midable than any violence, “since your brother’s re- 
turn, I have taken the precaution (a highly proper 
one in the near kinsman and natural guardian of an 
individual so situated) to have his deportment and 
habits constantly and carefully overlooked. Your 
neighbors have been eye-witnesses to whatever has 
passed in the garden. ‘The butcher, the baker, the 
fish-monger, some of the customers of your shop, and 
many a prying old woman, have told me several of the 
secrets of your interior. A still larger circle — I my- 
self, among the rest — can testify to his extravagances 
at the arched window. Thousands beheld him, a week 
or two ago, on the point of flinging himself thence into 
the street. From all this testimony, I am led to ap- 
prehend — reluctantly, and with deep grief — that 
Clifford’s misfortunes have so affected his intellect, 
never very strong, that he cannot safely remain at 
large. The alternative, you must be aware, — and its 
adoption will depend entirely on the decision which I 
am now about to make, —the alternative is his con- 
finement, probably for the remainder of his life,in a 
public asylum for persons in his unfortunate state of 
mind.” 

“ You cannot mean it!” shrieked Hepzibah. 

“Should my cousin Clifford,” continued Judge Pyn- 
cheon, wholly undisturbed, “from mere malice, and 
hatred of one whose interests ought naturally to be 
dear to him, — a mode of passion that, as often as 
any other, indicates mental disease,— should he re- 
fuse me the information so important to myself, and 
which he assuredly possesses, I shall consider it the 
pne needed jot of evidence to satisfy my mind of his 


282 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


insanity. And, once sure of the course pointed out 
by conscience, you know me too well, Cousin Hepzi- 
bah, to entertain a doubt that I shall pursue it.” 

“QO, Jaffrey, — Cousin Jaffrey!” cried Hepzibah, 
mournfully, not passionately, “it is you that are dis- 
eased in mind, not Clifford! You have forgotten thai 
@ woman was your mother !— that you have had sis 
ters, brothers, children of your own! — or that there 
ever was affection between man and man, or pity from 
one man to another, in this miserable world! Else, 
how could you have dreamed of this? You are not 
young, Cousin Jaffrey !— no, nor middle-aged, — but 
already an old man! The hair is white upon your 
head! How many years have you to live? Are you 
not rich enough for that little time? Shall you be 
hungry, —shall you lack clothes, or a roof to shelter 
you, — between this point and the grave? No! but, 
with the half of what you now possess, you could 
revel in costly food and wines, and build a house twice 
as splendid as you now inhabit, and make a far greater 
show to the world, — and yet leave riches to your 
only son, to make him bless the hour of your death! 
Then, why should you do this cruel, cruel thing? — 
so mad a thing, that I know not whether to call it 
wicked! Alas, Cousin Jaffrey, this hard and grasp- 
ing spirit has run in our blood these two hundred 
years. You are but doing over again, in another 
shape, what your ancestor before you did, and send- 
ing down to your posterity the curse inherited from 
him !” 

“Talk sense, Hepzibah, for Heaven’s sake!” ex- 
claimed the Judge, with the impatience natural to a 
reasonable man, on hearing anything so utterly ab- 
wird as the above, in a discussion about matters of 


THE SCOWL AND SMILE. 288 


business. ‘I have told you my determination. I am 
not apt to change. Clifford must give up his secret 
or take the consequences. And let him decide quickly ; 
for I have several affairs to attend to this morning, 
and an important dinner engagement with some polit. 
ical friends.” 

“ Clifford has no secret!” answered Hepzibah, 
* And God will not let you do the thing you medi- 
tate!” 

“We shall see,” said the unmoved Judge. ‘ Mean- 
while, choose whether you will summon Clifford, and 
allow this business to be amicably settled by an inter- 
view between two kinsmen, or drive me to harsher 
measures, which I should be most happy to feel my- 
self justified in avoiding. The responsibility is alto- 
gether on your part.” 

“You are stronger than I,” said Hepzibah, after a 
brief consideration ; “and you have no pity in your 
strength! Clifford is not now insane; but the inter- 
view which you insist upon may go far to make him 
so. Nevertheless, knowing you as I do, I believe it 
to be my best course to allow you to judge for your- 
self as to the improbability of his possessing any valu- 
able secret. I will call Clifford. Be merciful in your 
dealings with him!—be far more merciful than your 
heart bids you be! — for God is looking at you, Jaf- 
frey Pyncheon !” 

The Judge followed his cousin from the shop, where 
the foregoing conversation had passed, into the par- 
lor, and flung himself heavily into the great ances- 
tral chair. Many a former Pyncheon had found re- 
pose in its capacious arms: rosy children, after their 
sports; young men, dreamy with love; grown men, 
Weary with cares; old men, burdened with winters, 


284 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


— they had mused, and slumbered, and departed to 
a yet profounder sleep. It had been a long tradition. 
though a doubtful one, that this was the very chair 
seated in which, the earliest of the Judge’s New Eng: 
land forefathers —he whose picture still hung upon 
the wall— had given a dead man’s silent and stern 
reception to the throng of distinguished guests. From 
that hour of evil omen until the present, it may be, 
— though we know not the secret of his heart, — but 
it may be that no wearier and sadder man had ever 
sunk into the chair than this same Judge Pyncheon, 
whom we have just beheld so immitigably hard and 
vesolute. Surely, it must have been at no slight cost 
that he had thus fortified his soul with iron. Such 
calmness is a mightier effort than the violence of 
weaker men. And there was yet a heavy task for 
him to do. Was it a little matter, —a trifle to be 
prepared for in a single moment, and to be rested 
from in another moment, — that he must now, after 
thirty years, encounter a kinsman risen from a living 
tomb, and wrench a secret from him, or else consign 
him to a living tomb again ? 

“Did you speak?” asked Hepzibah, looking in from 
the threshold of the parlor; for she imagined that the 
Judge had uttered some sound which she was anxious 
to interpret as a relenting impulse. “I thought you 
called me back.” 

“No, no!” gruffly answered Judge Pyncheon, with 
a harsh frown, while his brow grew almost a black 
purple, in the shadow of the room. ‘ Why should J 
zall you back? Time flies! Bid Clifford come ta 
me!” 

The Judge had taken his watch from his vest-pocket 
and now held it in his hand, measuring the interval 
which was to ensue before the appearance of Clifford. 


XVI. 
CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER. 


NEvER had the old house appeared so dismal t¢ 
poor Hepzibah as when she departed on that wretched 
errand. There was a strange aspect in it. As she 
trode along the foot-worn passages, and opened one 
crazy door after another, and ascended the creaking 
staircase, she gazed wistfully and fearfully around. It 
would have been no marvel, to her excited mind, if, 
behind or beside her, there had been the rustle of dead 
people’s garments, or pale visages awaiting her on the 
landing-place above. Her nerves were set all ajar by 
the scene of passion and terror through which she had 
just struggled. Her colloquy with Judge Pyncheon, 
who so perfectly represented the person and attributes 
of the founder of the family, had called back the dreary 
past. It weighed upon her heart. Whatever she had 
heard, from legendary aunts and grandmothers, con- 
cerning the good or evil fortunes of the Pyncheons, — 
stories which had heretofore been kept warm in hei 
remembrance by the chimney-corner glow that was as- 
3ociated with them,-——now recurred to her, sombre, 
ghastly, cold, like most passages of family history, 
when brooded over in melancholy mood. The whole 
seemed little else but a series of calamity, reproducing 
itself in successive generations, with one general hue, 
and varying in little, save the outline. But Hepzibah 
now felt as if the Judge, and Clifford, and herself, — 


236 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


they three together, — were on the point of adding am 
other incident to the annals of the house, with a bolder 
relief of wrong and sorrow, which would cause it to 
stand out from all the rest. Thus it is that the grief 
of the passing moment takes upon itself an mdividual. 
ity, and a character of climax, which it is destined ta 
lose after a while, and to fade into the dark gray tissue 
common to the grave or glad events of many years 
ago. It is but for a moment, comparatively, that any- 
thing looks strange or startling, —a truth that has 
the bitter and the sweet in it. 

But Hepzibah could not rid herself of the sense of 
something unprecedented at that instant passing and 
soon to be accomplished. Her nerves were in a shake. 
Instinctively she paused before the arched window, and 
looked out upon the street, in order to seize its perma- 
nent objects with her mental grasp, and thus to steady 
herself from the reel and vibration which affected her 
more immediate sphere. It brought her up, as we may 
say, with a kind of shock, when she beheld everything 
under the same appearance as the day before, and 
numberless preceding days, except for the difference 
between sunshine and sullen storm. Her eyes trav- 
elled along the street, from doorstep to doorstep, not- 
ing the wet sidewalks, with here and there a puddle in 
hollows that had been imperceptible until filled with 
water. She screwed her dim optics to their acutest 
point, in the hope of making out, with greater distinct- 
ness, a certain window, where she half saw, halt 
guessed, that a tailor’s seamstress was sitting at her 
work. Hepzibah flung herself upon that unknown 
woman’s companionship, even thus far off. Then she 
was attracted by a chaise rapidly passing, and watched 
its moist and glistening top, and its splashing wheels, 





INSTINCTIVELY SHE PAUSED BEFORE THE ARCHED 
WINDOW 


VW 


o 





CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER. 287 


ontil it had turned the corner, and refused to carry 
any further her idly trifling, because appalled and 
overburdened, mind. When the vehicle had disap- 
peared, she allowed herself still another loitering mo- 
ment; for the patched figure of good Uncle Venner 
was now visible, coming slowly from the head of the 
street downward, with a rheumatic limp, because the 
east wind had got into his joints. Hepzibah wished 
that he would pass yet more slowly, and befriend her 
shivering solitude a little longer. Anything that would 
take her out of the grievous present, and interpose 
human beings betwixt herself and what was nearest to 
her, — whatever would defer for an instant, the inevi- 
table errand on which she was bound, —all such im- 
pediments were welcome. Next to the lightest heart, 
the heaviest is apt to be most playful. 

Hepzibah had little hardihood for her own proper 
pain and far less for what she must inflict on Clifford. 
Of so slight a nature, and so shattered by his previous 
calamities, it could not well be short of utter ruin to 
bring him face to face with the hard, relentless man, 
who had been his evil destiny through life. Even had 
there been no bitter recollections, nor any hostile in- 
terest now at stake between them, the mere natural re- 
pugnance of the more sensitive system to the massive, 
weighty, and unimpressible one, must, in itself, have 
been disastrous to the former. It would he like fling- 
ing a porcelain vase, with already a crack in it, against 
a granite column. Never before had Hepzibah so 
adequately estimated the powerful character of her 
cousin Jaffrey, — powerful by intellect, energy of will, 
the long habit of acting among men, and, as she be- 
lieved, by his unscrupulous pursuit of selfish ends 
through evil means. It did but increase the difficulty 


288 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


that Judge Pyncheon was under a delusion as to the 
secret which he supposed Clifford to possess. Men of 
his strength of purpose, and customary sagacity, if 
they chance to adopt a mistaken opinion in practical 
matters, so wedge it and fasten it among things known 
to be true, that to wrench it out of their minds is 
hardly less difficult than pulling up an oak. Thus, as 
the Judge required an impossibility of Clifford, the 
latter, as he could not perform it, must needs perish, 
For what, in the grasp of a man like this, was to be- 
come of Clifford’s soft poetic nature, that never should 
have had a task more stubborn than to set a life of 
beautiful enjoyment to the flow and rhythm of musical 
cadences! Indeed, what had become of it already? 
Broken! Blighted! All but annihilated! Soon to 
be wholly so! 

For a moment, the thought crossed Hepzibah’s 
mind, whether Clifford might not really have such 
knowledge of their deceased uncle’s vanished estate as 
the Judge imputed to him. She remembered some 
vague intimations, on her brother’s part, which — if 
the supposition were not essentially preposterous — 
might have been so interpreted. There had been 
schemes of travel and residence abroad, day-dreams of 
brilliant life at home, and splendid castles in the air, 
which it would have required boundless wealth to build 
and realize. Had this wealth been in her power, how 
vladly would Hepzibah have bestowed it all upon her 
iron-hearted kinsman, to buy for Clifford the-freedom 
and seclusion of the desolate old house! But she be- 
lieved that her brother’s schemes were as destitute of 
actual substance and purpose as a child’s pictures of 
fts future life, while sitting in a little chair by its 
mother’s knee. Clifford had none but shadowy gold 


CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER. 289 


at his command ; and it was not the stuff to satisfy 
Judge Pyncheon ! 

Was there no help, in their extremity? It seemet 
strange that there should be none, with a city round 
about her. It would be so easy to throw up the win- 
dow, and send forth a shriek, at the strange agony of 
which everybody would come hastening to the rescue, 
well understanding it to be the cry of a human soul. 
at some dreadful crisis! But how wild, how almos; 
laughable, the fatality, — and yet how continually it 
comes to pass, thought Hepzibah, in this dull delirium 
of a world, — that whosoever, and with however kindly 
a purpose, should come to help, they would be sure to 
help the strongest side! Might and wrong combined, 
like iron magnetized, are endowed with irresistible at- 
traction. There would be Judge Pyncheon, —a per- 
son eminent in the public view, of high station and 
great wealth, a philanthropist, a member of Congress 
and of the church, and intimately associated with 
whatever else bestows good name,— so imposing, in 
these advantageous lights, that Hepzibah herself could 
hardly help shrinking from her own conclusions as to 
his hollow integrity. The Judge, on one side! And 
who, on the other? The guilty Clifford! Once a by- 
word! Now, an indistinctly remembered ignominy! 

Nevertheless, in spite of this perception that the 
Judge would draw all human aid to his own behalf, 
Hepzibah was so unaccustomed to act for herself, that 
the least word of counsel would have swayed her to 
any mode of action. Little Phebe Pyncheon would 
at once have lighted up the whole scene, if not by any 
available suggestion, yet simply by the warm vivacity 
of her character. The idea of the artist occurred to 
Hepzibah. Young and unknown, mere vagrant ad 


WOL. Iu. 19 


290 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


venturer as he was, she had been conscious of a force 
in Holgrave which might well adapt him to be the 
champion of a crisis. With this thought in her mind, 
she unbolted a door, cobwebbed and long disused, but 
which had served as a former medium of communica- 
tion between her own part of the house and the gable 
where the wandering daguerreotypist had now estab- 
lished his temporary home. He was not there. A 
book, face downward, on the table, a roll of manu- 
script, a half-written sheet, a newspaper, some tools of 
his present occupation, and several rejected daguerre- 
otypes, conveyed an impression as if he were close at 
hand. But, at this period of the day, as Hepzibah 
might have anticipated, the artist was at his public 
rooms. With an impulse of idle curiosity, that flick- 
ered among her heavy thoughts, she looked at one 
of the daguerreotypes, and beheld Judge Pyncheon 
frowning at her. Fate stared her in the face. She 
turned back from her fruitless quest, with a heart- 
sinking sense of disappointment. In all her years of 
seclusion, she had never felt, as now, what it was to 
be alone. It seemed as if the house stood in a desert, 
or, by some spell, was made invisible to those who 
dwelt around, or passed beside it; so that any mode 
of misfortune, miserable accident, or crime might hap- 
pen in it without the possibility of aid. In her grief 
and wounded pride, Hepzibah had spent her life in 
divesting herself of friends; she had wilfully cast off 
the support which God has ordained his creatures te 
need from one another; and it was now her punish- 
ment, that Clifford and herself would fall the easier 
victims to their kindred enemy. 

Returning to the arched window, she lifted her eyes, 
~« scowling, poor, dim-sighted Hepzibah, in the face 


CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER. 291 


of Heaven!—and strove hard to send up a prayer 
through the dense gray pavement of clouds. Those 
mists had gathered, as if to symbolize a great, brood- 
ing mass of human trouble, doubt, confusion, and chill 
indifference, between earth and the better regions, 
Her faith was too weak; the prayer too heavy to be 
thus uplifted. It fell back, a lump of lead, upon her 
heart. It smote her with the wretched conviction that 
Providence intermeddled not in these petty wrongs of 
pne individual to his fellow, nor had any balm for these 
little agonies of a solitary soul; but shed its justice, 
and its mercy, in a broad, sunlike sweep, over half the 
universe at once. Its vastness made it nothing. But 
Hepzibah did not see that, just as there comes a warm 
sunbeam into every cottage window, so comes a love- 
beam of God’s care and pity for every separate need. 

At last, finding no other pretext for deferring the 
torture that she was to inflict on Clifford, — her re- 
luctance to which was the true cause of her loitering 
at the window, her search for the artist, and even her 
abortive prayer, — dreading, also, to hear the stern 
voice of Judge Pyncheon from below stairs, chiding 
her delay,—she crept slowly, a pale, grief-stricken 
figure, a dismal shape of woman, with almost torpid 
limbs, slowly to her brother’s door, and knocked ! 

There was no reply! 

And how should there have been? Her hand, 
tremulous with the shrinking purpose which directed 
it, had smitten so feebly against the door that the 
sound could hardly have gone inward. She knocked 
again. Still, no response! Nor was it to be won- 
dered at. She had struck with the entire force of 
her heart’s vibration, communicating, by some subtile 
magnetism, her own terror to the summons. Cliffor¢ 


292 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


would turn his face to the pillow, and cover his hea@ 
beneath the bedclothes, like a startled child at mid- 
night. She knocked a third time, three regular 
strokes, gentle, but perfectly distinct, and with mean- 
ing in them; for, modulate it with what cautious art 
we will, the hand cannot help playing some tune of 
what we feel, upon the senseless wood. 

Clifford returned no answer. 

“Clifford! dear brother!” said Hepzibah. ‘ Shal} 
T come in?” 

A silence. 

Two or three times, and more, Hepzibah repeated 
ais name, without result; till, thinking her brother’s 
sleep unwontedly profound, she undid the door, and 
entering, found the chamber vacant. How could he 
have come forth, and when, without her knowledge? 
Was it possible that, in spite of the stormy day, and 
worn out with the irksomeness within doors, he had 
betaken himself to his customary haunt in the garden, 
and was now shivering under the cheerless shelter of 
the summer-house? She hastily threw up a window, 
thrust forth her turbaned head and the half of her 
gaunt figure, and searched the whole garden through, 
as completely as her dim vision would allow. She 
could see the interior of the summer-house, and its cir- 
cular seat, kept moist by the droppings of the roof, 
It had no occupant. Clifford was not thereabouts ; 
unless, indeed, he had crept for concealment (as, for a 
moment, Hepzibah fancied might be the case) into a 
great, wet mass of tangled and broad-leaved shadow, 
where the squash-vines were clambering tumultuously 
upon an old wooden framework, set casually aslant 
acninst the fence. This could not be, however; he 
was not there; for, while Hepzibah was looking, a 


CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER. 293 


strange grimalkin stole forth from the very spot, and 
picked his way across the garden. Twice he paused 
to snuff the air, and then anew directed his course 
towards the parlor window. Whether it was only on 
account of the stealthy, prying manner common to the 
race, or that this cat seemed to have more than or. 
dinary mischief in his thoughts, the old gentlewoman, 
in spite of her much perplexity, felt an impulse to 
drive the animal away, and accordingly flung down a 
window-stick. The cat stared up at her, like a de- 
tected thief or murderer, and, the next instant, took to 
flight. No other living creature was visible in the 
garden. Chanticleer and his family had either not 
left their roost, disheartened by the interminable rain, 
or had done the next wisest thing, by seasonably re- 
turning to it. Hepzibah closed the window. 

But where was Clifford? Could it be that, aware 
of the presence of his Evil Destiny, he had crept si- 
lently down the staircase, while the Judge and Hepzi- 
bah stood talking in the shop, and had softly undone 
the fastenings of the outer door, and made his escape 
into the street? With that thought, she seemed to 
behold his gray, wrinkled, yet childlike aspect, in the 
old-fashioned garments which he wore about the house; 
a figure such as one sometimes imagines himself to 
be, with the world’s eye upon him, in a troubled dream. 
This figure of her wretched brother would go wander- 
ing through the city, attracting all eyes, and every: 
body’s wonder and repugnance, like a ghost, the more 
to be shuddered at because visible at noontide. To 
incur the ridicule of the younger crowd, that knew 
bim not, —the harsher scorn and indignation of a few 
old men, who might recall his once familiar features! 
To be the sport of boys, who, when old enough to run 


294 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


about the streets, have no more reverence for what is 
beautiful and holy, nor pity for what is sad, —no 
more sense of sacred misery, sanctifying the human 
shape in which it embodies itself,—than if Satan 
were the father of them all! Goaded by their taunts, 
their loud, shrill cries, and cruel laughter, — insulted 
by the filth of the public ways, which they would fling 
apon him,— or, as it might well be, distracted by 
the mere strangeness of his situation, though nobody 
should afflict him with so much as a thoughtless word, 
— what wonder if Clifford were to break into some 
wild extravagance which was certain to be interpreted 
as lunacy? Thus Judge Pyncheon’s fiendish scheme 
would be ready accomplished to his hands! 

Then Hepzibah reflected that the town was almost 
completely water-girdled. The wharves stretched out 
towards the centre of the harbor, and, in this inclem- 
ent weather, were deserted by the ordinary throng of 
merchants, laborers, and sea-faring men ; each wharf 
a solitude, with the vessels moored stem and stern, 
along its misty length. Should her brother’s aimless 
footsteps stray thitherward, and he but bend, one mo- 
ment, over the deep, black tide, would he not bethink 
himself that here was the sure refuge within his reach, 
and that, with a single step, or the slightest overbal- 
ance of his body, he might be forever beyond his kins- 
man’s gripe? Oh, the temptation! To make of his 
ponderous sorrow a security! To sink, with its leaden 
weight upon him, and never rise again ! 

The horror of this last conception was too much for 
Hepzibah. Even Jaffrey Pyncheon must help her 
now! She hastened down the staircase, shrieking as 
she went. 


“Clifford is gone!” she cried. ‘I cannot find my 


CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER. 295 


brother! Help, Jaffrey Pyncheon! Some harm wil. 
happen to him! ” 

She threw open the parlor-door. But, what with 
the shade of branches across the windows, and the 
smoke-blackened ceiling, and the dark oak-panelling 
of the walls, there was hardly so much daylight in the 
room that Hepzibah’s imperfect sight could accurately 
flistinguish the Judge’s figure. She was certain, how- 
ever, that she saw him sitting in the ancestral arm- 
chair, near the centre of the floor, with his face some- 
what averted, and looking towards a window. So 
firm and quiet is the nervous system of such men as 
Judge Pyncheon, that he had perhaps stirred not more 
than once since her departure, but, in the hard com 
posure of his temperament, retained the position into 
which accident had thrown him. 

“T tell you, Jaffrey,’ cried Hepzibah, impatiently, 
as she turned from the parlor-door to search other 
rooms, ‘my brother is not in his chamber! You must 
help me seek him ! ” 

But Judge Pyncheon was not the man to let him. 
self be startled from an easy-chair with haste ill-befit- 
ting either the dignity of his character or his broad 
personal basis, by the alarm of an hysteric woman. 
Yet, considering his own interest in the matter, he 
might have bestirred himself with a little more alac- 
rity. 

“Do you hear me, Jaffrey Pyncheon?” screamed 
Hepzibah, as she again approached the parlor-door, 
after an ineffectual search elsewhere. “Clifford is 
gone!” 

At this instant, on the threshold of the parlor, 
emerging from within, appeared Clifford himself! 
His face was preternaturally pale; so deadly white, 


296 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


indeed, that, through all the glimmering indistinctnes$ 
of the passage-way, Hepzibah could discern his fea. 
tures, as if a light fell on them alone. ‘Their vivid 
and wild expression seemed likewise sufficient to illu- 
minate them; it was an expression of scorn and 
mockery, coinciding with the emotions indicated by 
his gesture. As Clifford stood on the threshold, partly 
turning back, he pointed his finger within the parlor, 
and shook it slowly as though he would have sum- 
moned, not Hepzibah alone, but the whole world, to 
gaze at some object inconceivably ridiculous. This 
action, so ill-timed and extravagant, — accompanied, 
too, with a look that showed more like joy than any 
other kind of excitement, — compelled Hepzibah to 
dread that her stern kinsman’s ominous visit had 
driven her poor brother to absolute insanity. Nor 
zould she otherwise account for the Judge’s quiescent 
mood than by supposing him craftily on the watch, 
while Clifford developed these symptoms of a dis- 
tracted mind. 

“ Be quiet, Clifford!” whispered his sister, raising 
her hand to impress caution. “Oh, for Heaven’s sake 
be quiet!” 

*“‘ Let him be quiet! What can he do better?” an- 
swered Clifford, with a still wilder gesture, pointing 
into the room which he had just quitted. ‘ As for us, 
Hepztbah, we can dance now! —we can sing, laugh, 
play, do what we will! The weight is gone, Hepzi- 
bah! it is gone off this weary old world, and we may 
be as light-hearted as little Phebe herself!” 

And, in accordance with his words, he began to 
laugh, still pointing his finger at the object, invisible 
to Hepzibah, within the parlor. She was seized with 
a sudden intuition of some horrible thing. She thrust 


‘‘AS FOR US, HEPZIBAH, CAN DANCE NoW!”’ 








CLIFFORD’S CHAMBER. 297 


herself past Clifford, and disappeared into the room; 
but almost immediately returned, with a ery choking 
in her throat. Gazing at her brother with an affrighted 
glance of inquiry, she beheld him all in a tremor and 
a quake, from head to foot, while, amid these commoted 
elements of passion or alarm, still flickered his gusty 
mirth. 

“ My God! what is to become of us?” gasped Hep. 
sibah. 

“Come!” said Clifford, in a tone of brief decision, 
most unlike what was usual with him. “ We stay 
here too long! Let us leave the old house to our 
eousin Jaffrey! He will take good care of it!” 

Hepzibah now noticed that Clifford had on a cloak, 

-a garment of long ago, —in which he had con- 
stantly muffled himself during these days of easterly 
storm. He beckoned with his hand, and intimated, 
so far as she could comprehend him, his purpose that 
they should go together from the house. There are 
chaotic, blind, or drunken moments, in the lives of 
persons who lack real force of character, — moments 
of test, in which courage would most assert itself, — 
but where these individuals, if left to themselves, stag- 
ger aimlessly along, or follow implicitly whatever 
guidance may befall them, even if it beachild’s. No 
matter how preposterous or insane, a purpose is a 
God-send to them. MHepzibah had reached this point. 
Unaccustomed to action or responsibility, — full of 
horror at what she had seen, and afraid to inquire, or 
almost to imagine, how it had come to pass, — af- 
frighted at the fatality which seemed to pursue her 
brother, — stupefied by the dim, thick, stifling atmos 
phere of dread, which filled the house as with a death 
smell, and obliterated all definiteness of thought, -- 


298 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


she yielded without a question, and on the instant, te 
the will which Clifford expressed. For herself, she 
was like a person in a dream, when the will always 
sleeps. Clifford, ordinarily so destitute of this fac- 
ulty, had found it in the tension of the crisis. 

‘Why do you delay so?”’ cried he, sharply. ‘ Put 
on your cloak and hood, or whatever it pleases you t¢ 
wear! No matter what; you cannot look beautiful 
nor brilliant, my poor Hepzibah! Take your purse, 
with money in it, and come along!” 

Hepzibah obeyed these instructions, as if nothing 
else were to be done or thought of. She began to 
wonder, it is true, why she did not wake up, and at 
what still more intolerable pitch of dizzy trouble her 
spirit would struggle out of the maze, and make her 
conscious that nothing of all this had actually hap- 
pened. Of course it was not real; no such black, 
easterly day as this had yet begun to be; Judge 
Pyncheon had not talked with her; Clifford had not 
jaughed, pointed, beckoned her away with him; but 
she had merely been afflicted —as lonely sleepers 
often are — with a great deal of unreasonable misery, 
in a morning dream! 

‘“‘ Now — now —I shall certainly awake!” thought 
Hepzibah, as she went to and fro, making her little 
preparations. ‘I can bear itno longer! I must wake 
up now!” 

But it came not, that awakening moment! It came 
not, even when, just before they left the house, Clif 
ford stole to the parlor-door, and made a parting obei 
sance to the sole occupant of the room. 

“¢ What an absurd figure the old fellow cuts now! ” 
whispered he to Hepzibah. “Just when he fancied 
he had me completely under his thumb! Come 


CLIFFORD'S CHAMBER. 299 


pome; make haste! or he will start up, like Giant 
Despair in pursuit of Christian and Hopeful, and 
eatch us yet!” 

As they passed into the street, Clifford directed 
Hepzibah’s attention to something on one of the posts 
of the front door. It was merely the initials of his 
ywn name, which, with somewhat of his characteristic 
grace about the torms of the letters, he had cut there 
when a boy. The brother and sister departed, and 
left Judge Pyncheon sitting in the old home of his 
forefathers, all by himself; so heavy and lumpish that 
we can liken him to nothing better than a defunct 
nightmare, which had perished in the midst of its 
wickedness, and left its flabby corpse on the breast of 
the tormented one, to be gotten rid of as it might! 


XVII. 
THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS. 


SuMMER as it was, the east wind set poor Hepzi 
bah’s few remaining teeth chattering in her head, as 
she and Clifford facea it, on their way up Pyncheon 
Street, and towards the centre of the town. Not 
merely was it the shiver which this pitiless blast 
brought to her frame (although her feet and hands, 
especially, had never seemed so death-a-cold as now), 
-but there was a moral sensation, mingling itself with 
the physical chill, and causing her to shake more in 
spirit than in body. The world’s broad, bleak at- 
mosphere was all so comfortless!} Such, indeed, is 
the impression which it makes on every new adven- 
turer, even if he plunge into it while the warmest tide 
of life is bubbling through his veins. What, then, 
must it have been to Hepzibah and Clifford, — so 
time-stricken as they were, yet so like children in 
their inexperience, —as they left the doorstep, and 
passed from beneath the wide shelter of the Pyncheon 
Elm! They were wandering all abroad, on precisely 
such a pilgrimage as a child often meditates, to the 
world’s end, with perhaps a sixpence and a biscuit 
in his pocket. In Hepzibah’s mind, there was tho 
wretched consciousness of being adrift. She had lost 
the faculty of self-guidance; but, in view of the diffi- 
culties around her, felt it hardly worth an effort to 
regain it, and was, moreover, incapable of making one. 


THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS. 801 


As they proceeded on their strange expedition she 
now and then cast a look sidelong at Clifford, and 
could not but observe that he was possessed and 
swayed by a powerful excitement. It was this, in- 
deed, that gave him the control which he had at once, 
and so irresistibly, established over his movements. It 
not a little resembled the exhilaration of wine. Or, 
it might more fancifully be compared toa joyous piece 
of music, played with wild vivacity, but upon a dis- 
ordered instrument. As the cracked jarring note 
might always be heard, and as it jarred loudest amid 
the loftiest exultation of the melody, so was there a 
continual quake through Clifford, causing him most to 
quiver while he wore a triumphant smile, and seemed 
almost under a necessity to skip in his gait. 

They met few people abroad, even on passing from 
the retired neighborhood of the House of the Seven 
Gables into what was ordinarily the more thronged 
and busier portion of the town. Glistening sidewalks, 
with little pools of rain, here and there, along their 
unequal surface ; umbrellas displayed ostentatiously in 
the shop-windows, as if the life of trade had concen- 
tred itself in that one article ; wet leaves of the horse- 
. chestnut or elm-trees, torn off untimely by the blast 
and scattered along the public way; an unsightly ax 
cumulation of mud in the middle of the street, which 
perversely grew the more unclean for its long and 
laborious washing,— these were the more definable 
points of a very sombre picture. In the way of move- 
ment, and human life, there was the hasty rattle of a 
eab or coach, its driver protected by a water-proof cap 
over his head and shoulders; the forlorn figure of an 
ald man, who seemed to have crept out of some sub- 
terranean sewer, and was stooping along the kennel, 


302 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


and poking the wet rubbish with a stick, in quest of 
rusty nails; a merchant or two, at the door of the post 
pffice, together with an editor, and a miscellaneous pole 
jtician, awaiting a dilatory mail; a few visages of re- 
tired sea-captains at the window of an insurance office, 
looking out vacantly at the vacant street, blaspheming 
at the weather, and fretting at the dearth as well of 
public news as local gossip. What a treasure-trove 
to these venerable quidnuncs, could they have guessed 
the secret which Hepzibah and Clifford were carrymg 
along with them! But their two figures attracted 
hardly so much notice as that of a young girl, who 
passed at the same instant, and happened to raise her 
skirt a trifle too high above her ankles. Had it been 
a sunny and cheerful day, they could hardly have gone 
through tke streets without making themselves obnox- 
ious to remark. Now, probably, they were felt to be 
in keeping with the dismal and bitter weather, and 
therefore did not stand out in strong relief; as if the 
sun were shining on them, but melted into the gray 
gloom and were forgotten as soon as gone. 

Poor Hepzibah! Could she have understood this 
fact, it would have brought her some little comfort ; 
for, to all her other troubles, — strange to say!— 
there was added the womanish and old-maiden-like 
misery arising from a sense of unseemliness in her 
attire. Thus, she was fain to shrink deeper into her- 
self, as it were, as if in the hope of making people 
suppose that here was only a cloak and hood, thread. 
bare and wofully faded, taking an airing in the midst 
of the storm, without any wearer! 

As they went on, the feeling of indistinctness and 
anreality kept dimly hovering round about her, and 
so diffusing itself into her system that one of her 


THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS. 303 


nands was hardly palpable to the touch of the other. 
Any certainty would have been preferable to this. 
She whispered to herself, again and again, “ Am 1 
awake ?— Am I awake?” and sometimes exposed 
her face to the chill spatter of the wind, for the sake 
of its rude assurance that she was. Whether it was 
Clifford’s purpose, or only chance, had led them 
thither, they now found themselves passing beneath 
the arched entrance of a large structure of gray stone, 
Within, there was a spacious breadth, and an airy 
height from fioor to roof, now partially filled with 
smoke and steam, which eddied voluminously upward 
and formed a mimic cloud-region over their heads. 
A train of cars was just ready for a start; the loco- 
motive was fretting and fuming, like a steed impa- 
tient for a headlong rush; and the bell rang out its 
hasty peal, so well expressing the brief summons which 
life vouchsafes to us in its hurried career. Without 
question or delay, — with the irresistible decision, if 
not rather to be called recklessness, which had so 
strangely taken possession of him, and through him 
of Hepzibah, — Clifford impelled her towards the 
cars, and assisted her to enter. The signal was given; 
the engine puffed forth its short, quick breaths; the 
train began its movement; and, along with a hundred 
other passengers, these two unwonted travellers sped 
onward like the wind. 

At last, therefore, and after so long estrangement 
from everything that the world acted or enjoyed, they 
had been drawn into the great current of human life, 
and were swept away with it, as by the suction of fate 
itself. 

Still haunted with the idea that not one of the past 
incidents, inclusive of Judge Pyncheon’s visit, could 


804 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


be real, the recluse of the Seven Gables murmured in 
her brother’s ear, — 

“Clifford! Clifford! Is not this a dream?” 

“A dream, Hepzibah!” repeated he, almost laugh 
ing in her face. “On the contrary, I have never been 
awake before ! ” 

Meanwhile, looking from the window, they could see 
the world racing past them. At one moment, they 
were rattling through a solitude; the next, a village 
had grown up around them; a few breaths more, and 
it had vanished, as if swallowed by an earthquake. 
The spires of meeting-houses seemed set adrift from 
their foundations ; the broad-based hills glided away. 
Kverything was unfixed from its age-long rest, and 
moving at whirlwind speed in a direction opposite to 
their own. 

Within the car there was the usual interior life cf 
the railroad, offering little to the observation of other 
passengers, but full of novelty for this pair of strangely 
enfranchised prisoners. It was novelty enough, indeed, 
that there were fifty human beings in close relation 
with them, under one long and narrow roof, and drawn 
onward by the same mighty influence that had taken 
their two selves into its grasp. It seemed marvellous 
how all these people could remain so quietly in their 
seats, while so much noisy strength was at work in 
their behalf. Some, with tickets in their hats (long 
travellers these, before whom lay a hundred miles of 
railroad), had plunged into the English scenery and 
adventures of pamphlet novels, and were keeping com- 
pany with dukes and earls. Others, whose briefer 
span forbade their devoting themselves to studies so 
abstruse, beguiled the little tedium of the way with 
penny-papers. A party of girls, and one young man, 


THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS. 305 


on opposite sides of the car, found huge amusement it 
a game of ball. They tossed it to and fro, with peals 
of laughter that might be measured by mile-lengths ; 
for, faster than the nimble ball could fly, the merry 
players fled unconsciously along, leaving the trail of 
their mirth afar behind, and ending their game under 
another sky than had witnessed its commencement, 
Boys, with apples, cakes, candy, and rolls of variously 
tinctured lozenges, — merchandise that reminded Hep- 
zibah of her deserted shop, — appeared at each momen. 
tary stopping-place, doing up their business in a hurry, 
or breaking it short off, lest the market should ravish 
them away with it. New people continually entered. 
Old acquaintances — for such they soon grew to be, 
in this rapid current of affairs — continually departed. 
Here and there, amid the rumble and the tumult sat 
one asleep. Sleep; sport; business; graver or lighter 
study ; and the common and inevitable movement on- 
ward! It was life itself! 

Clifford’s naturally poignant sympathies were all 
aroused. He caught the color of what was passing 
about him, and threw it back more vividly than he re- 
ceived it, but mixed, nevertheless, with a lurid and 
portentous hue. Hepzibah, on the other hand, felt 
herself more apart from human kind than even in the 
seclusion which she had just quitted. 

* You are not happy, Hepzibah!” said Clifford, 
apart, in a tone of reproach. ‘ You are thinking of 
that dismal old house, and of Cousin Jaffrey,’ — here 
came the quake through him, — “and of Cousin Jaf 
frey sitting there, all by himself! Take my advice, 
-- follow my example, — and let such things slip 
aside. Here we are, in the world, Hepzibah ! — in 
the midst of life ! — in the throng of our fellow-beings! 


VOL, III. 20 


306 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


Let you and I be happy! As happy as that youtis 
and those pretty girls, at their game of ball!” 

“ Happy!” thought Hepzibah, bitterly conscious, at 
the word, of her dull and heavy heart, with the frozex 
pain in it, — “happy! He is mad already ; and, if | 
could once feel myself broad awake, I should go mad 
too!” 

If a fixed idea be madness, she was perhaps not re. 
mote from it. Fast and far as they had rattled and 
clattered along the iron track, they might just as well, 
as regarded Hepzibah’s mental images, have been pass- 
ing up and down Pyncheon Street. With miles and 
miles of varied scenery between, there was no scene 
for her, save the seven old gable-peaks, with their 
moss, and the tuft of weeds in one of the angles, and 
the shop-window, and a customer shaking the door, and 
compelling the little bell to jingle fiercely, but without 
disturbing Judge Pyncheon! ‘This one old house was 
everywhere! It transported its great, lumbering bulk 
with more than railroad speed, and set itself phleg- 
matically down on whatever spot she glanced at. The 
quality of Hepzibah’s mind was too unmalleable to 
take new impressions so readily as Clifford’s. He had 
a winged nature; she was rather of the vegetable 
kind, and could hardly be kept long alive, if drawn 
up by the roots. Thus it happened that the relation 
heretofore existing between her brother and herself 
was changed. At home, she was his guardian ; here, 
Clifford had become hers, and seemed to comprehend 
whatever belonged to their new position with a sin. 
gular rapidity of intelligence. He had been startled 
into manhood and intellectual vigor ; or, at least, inte 
a condition that resembled them, though it might be 
both diseased and transitory. 


THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS. 307 


The conductor now applied for their tickets; and 
Clifford, who had made himself the purse-bearer, put 
a bank-note into his hand, as he had observed others 
do. 

“ For the lady and yourself?” asked the conductor 
6 And how far?” 

*‘ As far as that will carry us,” said Clifford. * I¢ 
is no great matter. We are riding for pleasure 
merely !”’ 

*‘ You choose a strange day for it, sir!” remarked 
a gimlet-eyed old gentleman, on the other side of the 
ear, looking at Clifford and his companion, as if curi- 
ous to make them out. ‘The best chance of pleasure, 
in an easterly rain, I take it, is in a man’s own house, 
with a nice little fire in the chimney.” 

“‘T cannot precisely agree with you,” said Clifford, 
courteously bowing to the old gentleman, and at once 
taking up the clew of conversation which the latter 
had proffered. “It had just occurred to me, on the 
contrary, that this admirable invention of the rail- 
road — with the vast and inevitable improvements to 
be looked for, both as to speed and convenience — is 
destined to do away with those stale ideas of home and 
fireside, and substitute something better.” 

“In the name of common-sense,” asked the old 
gentleman, rather testily, ‘“‘ what can be better for a 
man than his own parlor and chimney-corner ?”’ 

“These things have not the merit which many good 
people attribute to them,” replied Clifford. ‘“ They 
may be said, in few and pithy words, to have ill served 
a poor purpose. My impression is, that our wonder- 
fully increased and still increasing facilities of locomo- 
tion are destined to bring us round again to the no- 
madic state. You are aware, my dear sir, -- you must 


308 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


have observed it in your own experience, — that all 
/human progress is in a circle; or, to use a more ac- 
‘curate and beautiful figure, in an ascending spiral 
curve. While we fancy ourselves going straight for- 
ward, and attaining, at every step, an entirely new 
position of affairs, we do actually return to something 
long ago tried and abandoned, but which we now find 
etherealized, refined, and perfected to its ideal. The 
past is but a coarse and sensual prophecy of the pres- 
ent and the future. To apply this truth to the topic 
now under discussion. In the early epochs of our 
race, men dwelt in temporary huts, of bowers of 
branches, as easily constructed as a bird’s-nest, and 
which they built, — if it should be called building, 
when such sweet homes of a summer solstice rather 
grew than were made with hands, — which Nature, we 
will say, assisted them to rear where fruit abounded, 
where fish and game were plentiful, or, most especially, 
where the sense of beauty was to be gratified by a love- 
lier shade than elsewhere, and a more exquisite ar- 
rangement of lake, wood, and hill. This life possessed 
a charm, which, ever since man quitted it, has vanished 
from existence. And it typified something better than 
itself. It had its drawbacks ; such as hunger and 
thirst, inclement weather, hot sunshine, and weary and 
foot-blistering marches over barren and ugly tracts, 
that lay between the sites desirable for their fertility 
and beauty. But in our ascending spiral, we escape 
all this. These railroads— could but the whistle be 
made musical, and the rumble and the jar got rid of 
—— are positively the greatest blessing that the ages 
have wrought out for us. They give us wings; they 
annihilate the toil and dust of pilgrimage ; they spirit 
aalize travel! Transition being so facile, what can be 


THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS. 309 


any man’s inducement to tarry in one spot? Why, 
therefore, should he build a more cumbrous habitation 
than can readily be carried off with him? Why should 
he make himself a prisoner for life in brick, and stone, 
and old worm-eaten timber, when he may just as easily 
dwell, in one sense, nowhere, — in a better sense, wher- 
ever the fit and beautiful shall offer him a home?” 

Clifford’s countenance glowed, as he divulged this 
theory ; a youthful character shone out from within, 
converting the wrinkles and pallid duskiness of age 
into an almost transparent mask. The merry girls let 
their ball drop upon the floor, and gazed at him. 
They said to themselves, perhaps, that, before his hair 
was gray and the crow’s-feet tracked his temples, this 
now decaying man must have stamped the impress of 
his features on many a woman’s heart. But, alas! no 
woman’s eye had seen his face while it was beautiful. 

“T should scarcely call it an improved state of 
things,” observed Clifford’s new acquaintance, “ to live 
everywhere and nowhere ! ” 

“ Would you not?” exclaimed Clifford, with sin- 
gular energy. “It is as clear to me as sunshine, — 
were there any in the sky, — that the greatest possi- 
ble stumbling-blocks in the path of human happiness 
and improvement are these heaps of bricks and stones, 
consolidated with mortar, or hewn timber, fastened to- 
gether with spike-nails, which men painfully contrive 
for their own torment, and call them house and home ! 
The soul needs air ; a wide sweep and frequent change 
of it. Morbid influences, in a thousand-fold variety, 
gather about hearths, and pollute the life of house- 
holds. There is no such unwholesome atmosphere as 
that of an old home, rendered poisonous by one’s de- 
funct forefathers and relatives. I speak of whai I 


310 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


know. There is a certain house within my familiay 
recollection, — one of those peaked-gable (there are 
seven of them), projecting-storied edifices, such as you 
occasionally see in our older towns, — a rusty, crazy, 
creaky, dry-rotted, damp-rotted, dingy, dark, and mis- 
erable old dungeon, with an arched window over the 
porch, and a little shop-door on one side, and a great, 
melancholy elm before it! Now, sir, whenever my 
thoughts recur to this seven-gabled mansion (the fact 
is so very curious that I must needs mention it), im- 
mediately I have a vision or image of an elderly man, 
of remarkably stern countenance, sitting in an oaken 
elbow-chair, dead, stone-dead, with an ugly flow of 
blood upon his shirt-bosom! Dead, but with open 
eyes! He taints the whole house, as I remember it. 
I could never flourish there, nor be happy, nor do nor 
enjoy what God meant me to do and enjoy!” 

His face darkened, and seemed to contract, and 
shrivel itself up, and wither into age. 

‘“‘ Never, sir!” he repeated. “I could never draw 
cheerful breath there!” 

“‘T should think not,” said the old gentleman, eying 
Clifford earnestly, and rather apprehensively. “I 
should conceive not, sir, with that notion in your 
head ! ”’ 

“Surely not,” continued Clifford; “and it were a 
relief to me if that: house could be torn down, or burnt 
up, and so the earth be rid of it, and grass be sown 
abundantly over its foundation. Not that I should 
ever visit its site again! for, sir, the farther I get 
away from it, the more does the joy, the lightsome 
freshness, the heart-leap, the intellectual dance, the 
youth, in short, — yes, my youth, my youth! — the 
more does it come back to me. No longer ago than 


THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS. dll 


this morning, I was old. J remember looking in the 
glass, and wondering at my own gray hair, and the 
wrinkles, many and deep, right across my brow, and 
the furrows down my cheeks, and the prodigious 
trampling of crow’s-feet about my temples! It was 
too soon! I could not bear it! Age had no right to 
come! I had not lived! But now do I look old? If 
so, my aspect belies me strangely; for —a great 
weight being off my mind —I feel in the very heyday 
of my youth, with the world and my best days before 
me!” 

“I trust you may find it so,” said the old gentle- 
man, who seemed rather embarrassed, and desirous of 
avoiding the observation which Clifford’s wild talk 
drew on them both. ‘ You have my best wishes for 
it.” 

“For Heaven’s sake, dear Clifford, be quiet!” 
whispered his sister. ‘ They think you mad.” 

“Be quiet yourself, Hepzibah !”’ returned her 
brother. ‘No matter what they think! I am not 
mad. For the first time in thirty years my thoughts 
gush up and find words ready for them. I must talk, 
and I will!” 

He turned again towards the old gentleman, and re- 
newed the conversation. 

“Yes, my dear sir,” said he, “it is my firm belief 
and hope that these terms of roof and hearth-stone, 
which have so long been held to embody something 
sacred, are soon to pass out of men’s daily use, and be 
forgotten. Just imagine, for a moment, how much of 
human evil will crumble away, with this one change! 
What we call real estate — the solid ground to build 
a house on — is the broad foundation on which nearly 
all the guilt of this world rests. A man will commit 


312 TEE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


almost any wrong, — he will heap up an immense pil 
of wickedness, as hard as granite, and which will 
weigh as heavily upon his soul, to eternal ages, — only 
to build a great, gloomy, dark-chambered mansion, fo1 
himself to die in, and for his posterity to be miserable 
in. He lays his own dead corpse beneath the under- 
pinning, as one may say, and hangs his frowning pict. 
ure on the wall, and, after thus converting himself into 
an evil destiny, expects his remotest great-grandchil 
dren to be happy there! Ido not speak wildly. 1} 
have just such a house in my mind’s eye!” 

“Then, sir,” said the old gentleman, getting anx. 
fous to drop the subject, “ you are not to blame for 
jeaving it.” 

‘Within the lifetime of the child already born,” 
Clifford went on, “all this will be done away. The 
world is growing too ethereal and spiritual to bear 
these enormities a great while longer. To me, — 
though, for a considerable period of time, I have lived 
chiefly in retirement, and know less of such things 
than most men, —even to me, the harbingers of a 
better era are unmistakable. Mesmerism, now! Will 
that effect nothing, think you, towards purging away 
the grossness out of human life?” 

“ All a humbug!” growled the old gentleman. 

*‘ These rapping spirits, that little Phebe told us of, 
the other day,” said Clifford, — ‘‘ what are these but 
the messengers of the spiritual world, knocking at the 
door of substance? And it shall be flung wide open!” 

*“ A humbug, again!” cried the old gentleman, 
growing more and more testy, at these glimpses of 
Clifford’s metaphysics. “I should like to rap with a 
good stick on the empty pates of the dolts who circu- 
late such nonsense ! ” 





“FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, DEAR CLIFFORD, BE QUIET!”’ 
WHISPERED HIS SISTER. ‘‘THEY THINK YOU MAD” 


Set 





THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS. 318 


“Then there is electricity, — the demon, the angel, 
the mighty physical power, the all-pervading intelli- 
gence!” exclaimed Clifford. ‘Is that a humbug, too? 
Is it a fact — or have I dreamt it — that, by means of 
electricity, the world of matter has become a great 
nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless 
point of time? Rather, the round globe is a vast 
head, a brain, instinct with intelligence! Or, shall 
we say, it is itself a thought, nothing but thought, 
and no longer the substance which we deemed it! ” 

“Tf you mean the telegraph,” said the old gentle. 
man, glancing his eye toward its wire, alongside the 
rail-track, “it is an excellent thing, —that is, of 
course, if the speculators in cotton and politics don’t 
get possession of it. A great thing, indeed, sir, par- 
ticularly as regards tke detection of bank-robbers and 
murderers,”’ 

“T don’t quite like it, in that point of view,” replied 
Clifford. ‘“ A bank-robber, and what you call a mur- 
derer, likewise, has his rights, which men of enlight- 
ened humanity and conscience should regard in so 
much the more liberal spirit, because the bulk of so- 
ciety is prone to controvert their existence. An al- 
most spiritual medium, like the electric telegraph, 
should be consecrated to high, deep, joyful, and holy 
missions. Lovers, day by day,-—- hour by hour, if so 
often moved to do it, — might send their heart-throbs 
from Maine to Florida, with some such words as these, 
‘I love you forever!’ —‘ My heart runs over with 
love!’ —‘I love you more than I can!’ and, again, at 
the next message, ‘I have lived an hour longer, and 
love you twice as much!’ Or, when a good man has 
departed, his distant friend should be conscious of an 
electric thrill, as from the world of happy spirits, telk 


814 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


ing him, ‘ Your dear friend is in bliss!’ Or, to an 
absent husband, should come tidings thus, ‘ An immor- 
tal being, of whom you are the father, has this moment 
come from God!’ and immediately its little voice 
would seem to have reached so far, and to be echoing 
in his heart. But for these poor rogues, the bank-rob- 
bers, — who after all, are about as honest as nine peo- 
ple in ten, except that they disregard certain formalli- 
ties, and prefer to transact business at midnight rather 
than ’Change-hours,—and for these murderers, as 
you phrase it, who are often excusable in the motives 
of their deed, and deserve to be ranked among public 
benefactors, if we consider only its result, — for unfor- 
tunate individuals like these, I really cannot applaud 
the enlistment of an immaterial and miraculous power 
in the universal world-hunt at their heels! ” 

“You can’t, hey?” cried the old gentleman, with a 
hard look. 

“Positively, no!” answered Clifford. “It puts 
them too miserably at disadvantage. For example, 
sir, in a dark, low, cross-beamed, panelled room of an 
old house, let us suppose a dead man, sitting in an 
arm-chair, with a blood-stain on his shirt- bosom, — 
and let us add to our hypothesis another man, issuing 
from the house, which he feels to be over-filled with 
the dead man’s presence, — and let us lastly imagine 
him fleeing, Heaven knows whither, at the speed of a 
hurricane, by railroad! Now, sir, if the fugitive alight 
in some distant town, and find all the people babbling 
about that self-same dead man, whom he has fled so 
far to avoid the sight and thought of, will you not al- 
low that his natural rights have been infringed? He 
has been deprived of his city of refuge, and, in my 
bumble opinion, has suffered infinite wrong! ” 


THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS. 315 


“ You are a strange man, sir!” said the old gentle- 
man, bringing his gimlet-eye to a point on Clifford, as 
if determined to bore right into him. “TI can’t see 
through you!” 

“No, I’ll be bound you can’t!” cried Clifford 
‘aughing. “And yet, my dear sir, I am as transpar 
mt as the water of Maule’s well! But come, Hepzi- 
bah! We have flown far enough for once. Let ug 
alight, as the birds do, and perch ourselves on the 
nearest twig, and consult whither we shall fly next! ” 

Just then, as it happened, the train reached a soli- 
tary way-station. Taking advantage of the brief 
pause, Clifford left the car, and drew Hepzibah along 
with him. A moment afterwards, the train — with 
all the life of its interior, amid which Clifford had 
made himself so conspicuous an object — was gliding 
away in the distance, and rapidly lessening to a point, 
which, in another moment, vanished. The world had 
fled away from these two wanderers. They gazed 
drearily about them. At a little distance stood a 
wooden church, black with age, and in a dismal state 
of ruin and decay, with broken windows, a great rift 
through the main body of the edifice, and a rafter 
dangling from the top of the square tower. Farther 
off was a farm-house, in the old style, as venerably 
black as the church, with a roof sloping downward 
from the three-story peak, to within a man’s height of 
the ground. It seemed uninhabited. There were the 
relics of a wood-pile, indeed, near the door, but with 
grass sprouting up among the chips and scattered logs. 
The small rain-drops came down aslant ; the wind was 
not turbulent, but sullen, and full of chilly moisture. 

Clifford shivered from head to foot. The wild effer- 
Gescence of his mood — which had so readily supplied 


3816 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


thoughts, fantasies, and a strange aptitude of words, 
and impelled him to talk from the mere necessity of 
giving vent to this bubbling-up gush of ideas — had 
entirely subsided. A powerful excitement had given 
him energy and vivacity. Its operation over, he forth 
with began to sink. 

“ You must take the lead now, Hepzibah!” mun 
mured he, with a torpid and reluctant utterance. ‘“ De 
with me as you will!” | 

She knelt down upon the platform where they were 
standing and lifted her clasped hands tothe sky. The 
dull, gray weight of clouds made it invisible; but it - 
was no hour for disbelief, — no juncture this to ques- 
tion that there was a sky above, and an Almighty 
Father looking from it! 

“OQ God!” —ejaculated poor, gaunt Hepzibah, —- 
then paused a moment, to consider what her prayer 
should be, — “O God. — our Father, — are we no? 
thy children ? Have mercy on us!” 


XVIII. 
GOVERNOR PYNCHEON. 


JUDGE PyNcHEON, while his two relatives have flea 
away with such ill-considered haste, still sits in the old 
parlor, keeping house, as the familiar phrase is, in the 
absence of its ordinary occupants. To him, and to 
the venerable FYouse of the Seven Gables, does our 
story now betake itself, like an owl, bewildered in the 
daylight, and hastening back to his hollow tree. 

The Judge has not shifted his position for a long 
while now. He has not stirred hand or foot, nor 
withdrawn his eyes so much as a hair’s-breadth from 
their fixed gaze towards the corner of the room, since 
the footsteps of Hepzibah and Clifford creaked along 
the passage, and the outer door was closed cautiously 
behind their exit. He holds his watch in his left 
hand, but clutched in such a manner that you cannot 
see the dial-plate. How profound a fit of meditation ! 
Or, supposing him asleep, how infantile a quietude of 
conscience, and what wholesome order in the gastric 
region, are betokened by slumber so entirely undis- 
turbed with starts, cramp, twitches, muttered dream- 
talk, trumpet-blasts through the nasal organ, or any the 
slightest irregularity of breath! You must hold your 
own breath, to satisfy yourself whether he breathes 
at all. It is quite inaudible. You hear the ticking of 
his watch; his breath you do not hear. A most re 
freshing slumber, doubtless! And yet, the Judge car 


818 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


not be asleep. His eyes are open! A veteran poli 
fician, such as he, would never fall asleep with wide: 
open eyes, lest some enemy or mischief-maker, taking 
him thus at unawares, should peep through these win- 
dows into his consciousness, and make strange discov- 
eries among the reminiscences, projects, hopes, appre- 
hensions, weaknesses, and strong points, which he has 
heretofore shared with nobody. A cautious man is 
proverbially said to sleep with one eye open. That 
may be wisdom. But not with both; for this were 
heedlessness! No, no! Judge Pyncheon cannot be 
asleep. 

It is odd, however, that a gentleman so burdened 
with engagements, — and noted, too, for punctuality, 
—should linger thus in an old lonely mansion, which 
he has never seemed very fond of visiting. The oaken 
chair, to be sure, may tempt him with its roominess. 
It is, indeed, a spacious, and, allowing for the rude 
age that fashioned it, a moderately easy seat, with ca- 
pacity enough, at all events, and offering no restraint 
to the Judge’s breadth of beam. A bigger man might 
find ample accommodation in it. His ancestor, now 
pictured upon the wall, with all his English beef about 
him, used hardly to present a front extending from 
elbow to elbow of this chair, or a base that would 
cover its whole cushion. But there are better chairs 
than this, — mahogany, black-walnut, rosewood, spring- 
seated and damask-cushioned, with varied slopes, and 
innumerable artifices to make them easy, and obviate 
the irksomeness of too tame an ease,— a score of 
such might be at Judge Pyncheon’s service. Yes! 
in a score of drawing-rooms he would be more than 
welcome. Mamma would advance to meet him, with 
outstretched hand ; the virgin daughter, elderly as he 





THE JUDGE HAS NOT SHIFTED HIS POSITION FOR A 
LONG WHILE NOW 





GOVERNOR PYNCHEON. 319 


has now got to be, — an old widower, as he smilingly 
describes himself, — would shake up the cushion for 
the Judge, and do her pretty little utmost to make 
him comfortable. For the Judge is a prosperous 
man. He cherishes his schemes, moreover, like other 
people, and reasonably brighter than most others; or 
did so, at least, as he lay abed this morning, in an 
agreeable half-drowse, planning the business of the 
day, and speculating on the probabilities of the next 
fifteen years. With his firm health, and the little 
inroad that age has made upon hin, fifteen years or 
twenty — yes, or perhaps five-and-twenty !— are no 
more than he may fairly call his own. Five-and-twenty 
years for the enjoyment of his real estate in town and 
country, his railroad, bank, and insurance shares, his 
United States stock, — his wealth, in short, however 
invested, now in possession, or soon to be acquired ; 
together with the public honors that have failen upon 
him, and the weightier ones that are yet to fall! It is 
good! It is excellent! It is enough! 

Still lingering in the old chair! If the Judge has a 
little time to throw away, why does not he visit the in- 
surance office, as is his frequent custom, and sit awhile 
in one of their leathern-cushioned arm-chairs, listening 
to the gossip of the day, and dropping some deeply de- 
signed chance-word, which will be certain to become 
the gossip of to-morrow! And have not the bank di- 
rectors a meeting at which it was the Judge’s purpose 
to be present, and his office to preside? Indeed they 
have; and the hour is noted on a card, which is, or 
ought to be, in Judge Pyncheon’s right vest-pocket. 
Let him go thither, and loll at ease upon his money- 
bags! He has lounged long enough in the old chair! 

This was to have been such a busy day! in the 


820 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


first place, the interview with Clifford. Half an hour, 
by the Judge’s reckoning, was to suffice for that; it 
would probably be less, but — taking into considera- 
ation that Hepzibah was first to be dealt with, and 
that these women are apt to make many words where 
a few would do much better — it might be safest to al- 
low half an hour. Half an hour? Why, Judge, it is 
already two hours, by your own undeviatingly accurate 
chronometer! Glance your eye down at it and see! 
Ah! he will not give himself the trouble either to bend 
his head, or elevate his hand, so as to bring the faith- 
ful time-keeper within his range of vision! ‘Time, all 
at once, appears to have become a matter of no mo- 
ment with the Judge! 

And has he forgotten all the other items of his 
memoranda? Clifford’s affair arranged, he was to meet 
a State Street broker, who has undertaken to procure 
a heavy percentage, and the best of paper, for a few 
loose thousands which the Judge happens to have by 
him, uninvested. The wrinkled note-shaver will have 
taken his railroad trip in vain. Half an hour later, in 
the street next to this, there was to be an auction of 
real estate, including a portion of the old Pyncheon 
property, originally belonging to Maule’s garden- 
ground. It has been alienated from the Pyncheons 
these four-score years; but the Judge had kept it in his 
eye, and had set his heart on reannexing it to the small 
demesne still left around the Seven Gables ; and now, 
during this odd fit of oblivion, the fatal hammer must 
have fallen, and transferred our ancient patrimony to 
some alien possessor! Possibly, indeed, the sale may 
have been postponed till fairer weather. If so, will the 
Judge make it convenient to be present, and favor thy 
auctioneer with his bid, on the proxinate vccasion f 


GOVERNOR PYNCHEON. 391 


The next affair was to buy a horse for his own driv. 
mg. ‘The one heretofore his favorite stumbled, this 
very morning, on the road to town, and must be at 
once discarded. Judge Pyncheon’s neck is too pre- 
cious to be risked on such a contingency as a stumbling 
steed. Should all the above business be seasonably 
got through with, he might attend the meeting of a 
charitable society; the very name of which, however. 
in the multiplicity of his benevolence, is quite for- 
gotten; so that this engagement may pass unfulfilled, 
and no great harm done. And if he have time, amid 
the press of more urgent matters, he must take meas- 
ures for the renewal of Mrs. Pyncheon’s tombstone, 
which, the sexton tells him, has fallen on its marble 
face, and is cracked quite in twain. She was a praise- 
worthy woman enough, thinks the Judge, in spite of 
her nervousness, and the tears that she was so oozy 
with, and her foolish behavior about the coffee; and 
as she took her departure so seasonably, he will not 
grudge the second tombstone. It is better, at least, 
than if she had never needed any! The next item on 
his list was to give orders for some fruit-trees, of a 
rare variety, to be deliverable at his country-seat, in 
the ensuing autumn. Yes, buy them, by all means; 
and may the peaches be luscious in your mouth, Judge 
Pyncheon! After this comes something more im- 
portant. A committee of his political party has be- 
sought him fora hundred or two of dollars, in addition 
to his previous disbursements, towards carrying on the 
fall campaign. The Judge is a patriot; the fate of 
the country is staked on the November election; and 
besides, as will be shadowed forth in another para- 
graph, he has no trifling stake of his own in the same 


great game. He will do what the committee asks; 
Ver m1. a1 


322 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


nay, he will be liberal beyond their expectations; they 
shall have a.check for five hundred dollars, and more 
anon, if it be needed. What next? A decayed 
widow, whose husband was Judge Pyncheon’s early 
friend, has laid her case of destitution before him, in 
a very moving letter. She and her fair daughter have 
scarcely bread to eat. He partly intends to call on 
her, to-day,— perhaps so— perhaps not,— accord- 
ingly as he may happen to have leisure, and a small 
bank-note. 

Another business, which, however, he puts no great 
weight on (it is well, you know, to be heedful, but not 
Over-anxious, as respects one’s personal health), — 
another business, then, was to consult his family phy- 
sician. About what, for Heaven’s sake? Why, it is 
rather difficult to describe the symptoms. A mere 
dimness of sight and dizziness of brain, was it? — or a 
disagreeable choking, or stifling, or gurgling, or bub- 
bling, in the region of the thorax, as the anatomists 
say ?—or was it a pretty severe throbbing and kick- 
ing of the heart, rather creditable to him than other- 
wise, as showing that the organ had not been left out 
of the Judge’s physical contrivance? No matter what 
it was. The doctor, probably, would smile at the 
statement of such trifles to his professional ear; the 
Judge would smile in his turn; and meeting one 
another’s eyes, they would enjoy a hearty laugh to- 
gether! But a fig for medical advice! The Judge 
will never need it. 

Pray, pray, Judge Pyncheon, look at your watch, 
aow! What—nota glance! It is within ten min- 
utes of the dinner-hour! It surely cannot have 
slipped your memory that the dinner of to-day is to be 
the most important, in its consequences, of all the din. 


GOVERNOR PYNCHEON. 323 


ners you ever ate. Yes, precisely the most important; 
although, in the course of your somewhat eminent 
eareer, you have been placed high towards the head of 
the table, at splendid banquets, and have poured out 
your festive eloquence to ears yet echoing with Web. 
ster’s mighty organ-tones. No public dinner this, 
however. It is merely a gathering of some dozen or 
so of friends from several districts of the State; men 
of distinguished character and influence, assembling, 
almost casually, at the house of a common friend, like- 
wise distinguished, who will make them welcome to a 
little better than his ordinary fare. Nothing in the 
way of French cookery, but an excellent dinner never- 
theless. Real turtle, we understand, and salmon, tau- 
tog, canvas-backs, pig, English mutton, good roast- 
beef, or dainties of that serious kind, fit for substantial 
country gentlemen, as these honorable persons mostly 
are. The delicacies of the season, in short, and fla- 
vored by a brand of old Madeira which has been the 
pride of many seasons. It is the Juno brand; a glo- 
rious wine, fragrant, and full of gentle might; a bot- 
tled-up happiness, put by for use; a golden liquid, 
worth more than liquid gold; so rare and admirable, 
that veteran wine-bibbers count it among their epochs 
to have tasted it! It drives away the heart-ache, and 
substitutes no head-ache! Could the Judge but quaff 
a glass, it might enable him to shake off the unac- 
countable lethargy which (for the ten intervening min- 
utes, and five to boot, are already past) has made him 
such a laggard at this momentous dinner. It would 
all but revive a dead man! Would you like to sip it 
now, Judge Pyncheon ? 

Alas, this dinner! Have you really forgotten its 
true object? Then let us whisper it, that you may 


324 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


start at once out of the oaken chair, which realiz 
seems to be enchanted, like the one in Comus, or that 
in which Moll Pitcher imprisoned your own grand- 
father. But ambition is a talisman more powerful 
than witchcraft. Start up, then, and, hurrying through 
the streets, burst_in upon the company, that they may 
begin before the fish is spoiled! They wait for you: 
and it is little for your interest that they should wait. 
These gentlemen—need you be told it?—have as- 
sembled, not without purpose, from every quarter of 
the State. They are practised politicians, every man 
of them, and skilled to adjust those preliminary 
measures which steal from the people, without its 
knowledge, the power of choosing its own rulers. ‘The 
popular voice, at the next gubernatorial election, 
though loud as thunder, will be really but an echo of 
what these gentlemen shall speak, under their breath, 
at your friend’s festive board. They meet to decide 
upon their candidate. This little knot of subtle 
schemers will control the convention, and, through it, 
dictate to the party. And what worthier candidate, 
—more wise and learned, more noted for philan- 
thropic liberality, truer to safe principles, tried oftener 
by public trusts, more spotless in private character, 
with a larger stake in the common welfare, and deeper 
grounded, by hereditary descent, in the faith and prac- 
tice of the Puritans, — what man can be presented for 
the suffrage of the people, so eminently combining all 
these claims to the chief-rulership as Judge Pyncheon 
here before us? 

Make haste, then! Do your part! The meed for 
which you have toiled, and fought, and climbed, and 
crept, is ready for your grasp! Be present at this 
dinner ! — drink a glass or two of that noble wine! — 


GOVERNOR PYNCHEON. #25 


make your pledges in as low a whisper as you will! — 
and you rise up from table virtually governor of the 
glorious old State! Governor Pyncheon of Massachu- 
setts | 

And is there no potent and exhilarating cordial in 
a certainty like this? It has been the grand purpose 
of half your lifetime to obtain it. Now, when there 
needs little more than to signify your acceptance, why 
do you sit so lumpishly in your great-great-grand- 
father’s oaken chair, as if preferring it to the guber- 
natorial one? We have all heard of King Log; but, 
in these jostling times, one of that royal kindred will 
hardly win the race for an elective chief-magistracy. 

Well! it is absolutely too late for dinner! Turtle, 
salmon, tautog, woodcock, boiled turkey, South-Down 
mutton, pig, roast-beef, have vanished, or exist only 
in fragments, with lukewarm potatoes, and gravies 
crusted over with cold fat. The Judge, had he done 
nothing else, would have achieved wonders with his 
knife and fork. It was he, you know, of whom it 
used to be said, in reference to his ogre-like appetite, 
that his Creator made him a great animal, but that 
the dinner-hour made him a great beast. Persons 
of his large sensual endowments must claim indul- 
gence, at their feeding-time. But, for once, the Judge 
is entirely too late for dinner! Too late, we fear, even 
to join the party at their wine! The guests are warm 
and merry; they have given up the Judge; and, con- 
cluding that the Free-Soilers have him, they will fix 
upon another candidate. Were our friend now to 
stalk in among them, with that wide-open stare, at 
once wild and stolid, his ungenial presence would be 
apt to change their cheer. Neither would it be seemly 
in Judge Pyncheon, generally so scrupulous in his 


826 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


attire, to show himself at a dinner-table with that 
crimson stain upon his shirt-bosom. By the by, how 
came it there? It is an ugly sight, at any rate; and 
the wisest way for the Judge is to button his coat 
closely over his breast, and, taking his horse and 
chaise from the livery-stable, to make all speed to 
his own house. There, after a glass of brandy and 
water, and a mutton-chop, a beefsteak, a broiled fowl, 
or some such hasty little dinner and supper all in one, 
he had better spend the evening by the fireside. He 
must toast his slippers a long while, in order to get 
rid of the chilliness which the air of this vile old house 
has sent curdling through his veins. 

Up, therefore, Judge Pyncheon, up! You have lost 
aday. But to-morrow will be here anon. Will you 
rise, betimes, and make the most of it? To-morrow! 
To-morrow! To-morrow! We, that are alive, may 
rise betimes to-morrow. As for him that has died to- 
day, his morrow will be the resurrection morn. 

Meanwhile the twilight is glooming upward out of 
the corners of the room. The shadows of the tall fur- 
niture grow deeper, and at first become more definite; 
then, spreading wider, they lose their distinctness of 
outline in the dark gray tide of oblivion, as it were, 
that creeps slowly over the various objects, and the 
one human figure sitting in the midst of them. The 
gloom has not entered from without; it has brooded 
here all day, and now, taking its own inevitable time, 
will possess itself of everything. The Judge’s face, 
indeed, rigid, and singularly white, refuses to melt into 
this universal solvent. Fainter and fainter grows the 
tight. It is as if another double-handful of darkness 
nad been scattered through the air. Now it is no 

onger gray, but sable. There is still a faint appear 


GOVERNOR PYNCHEON. 327 


ance at the window ; neither a glow, nor a gleam, nor 
a glimmer, — any phrase of light would express some- 
thing far brighter than this doubtful perception, or 
sense, rather, that there is a window there. Has it 
yet vanished? No!—yes!—not quite! And there 
is still the swarthy whiteness, — we shall venture to 
marry these ill-agreeing words, — the swarthy white. 
ness of Judge Pyncheon’s face. The features are all 
gone: there is only the paleness of them left. And 
how looks it now? ‘There is no window! There is 
no face! An infinite, inscrutable blackness has anni- 
hilated sight! Where is our universe? All crumbled 
away from us; and we, adrift in chaos, may hearken 
to the gusts of homeless wind, that go sighing and 
murmuring about, in quest of what was once a world! 

Is there no other sound? One other, and a fearful 
one. It is the ticking of the Judge’s watch, which, 
ever since Hepzibah left the room in search of Clif- 
ford, he has been holding in his hand. Be the cause 
what it may, this little, quiet, never-ceasing throb of 
Time’s pulse, repeating its small strokes with such 
busy regularity, in Judge Pyncheon’s motionless hand, 
has an effect of terror, which we do not find in any 
other accompaniment of the scene. 

But, listen! That puff of the breeze was louder; it 
had a tone unlike the dreary and sullen one which has 
bemoaned itself, and afflicted all mankind with mis- 
erable sympathy, for five days past. The wind has 
veered about! It now comes boisterously from the 
northwest, and, taking hold of the aged framework of 
the Seven Gables, gives it a shake, like a wrestler 
that would try strength with his antagonist. Another 
and another sturdy tussle with the blast! The old 
house creaks again, and makes a vociferous but some: 


328 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


what unintelligible bellowing in its sooty throat (the 
big flue, we mean, of its wide chimney), partly in 
complaint at the rude wind, but rather, as befits their 
century and a half of hostile intimacy, in tough defi- 
ance. A rumbling kind of a bluster roars behind the 
fire-board. A door has slammed above stairs. A win- 
dow, perhaps, has been left open, or else is driven in 
by an unruly gust. It is not to be conceived, before- 
hand, what wonderful wind-instruments are these old 
timber mansions, and how haunted with the strangest 
noises, which immediately begin to sing, and sigh, and 
sob, and shriek, — and to smite with sledge-hammers, 
airy but ponderous, in some distant chamber, — and 
to tread along the entries as with stately footsteps, and 
rustle up and down the staircase, as with silks mirac- 
ulously stiff, — whenever the gale catches the house 
with a window open, and gets fairly into it. Would 
that we were not an attendant spirit here! It is too 
awiul! This clamor of the wind through the lonely 
house ; the Judge’s quietude, as he sits invisible; and 
that pertinacious ticking of his watch ! 

As regards Judge Pyncheon’s invisibility, however, 
that matter will soon be remedied. The northwest 
wind has swept the sky clear. The window is dis- 
tinctly seen. Through its panes, moreover, we dimly 
catch the sweep of the dark, clustering foliage, out- 
side, fluttering with a constant irregularity of move- 
ment, and letting in a peep of starlight, now here, 
now there. Oftener than any other object, these 
glimpses illuminate the Judge’s face. But here comes 
more effectual light. Observe that silvery dance upon 
the upper branches of the pear-tree, and now a little 
lower, and now on the whole mass of boughs, while, 
through their shifting intricacies, the moonbeams faij 


GOVERNOR PYNCHEON. 829 


aslant into the room. They play over the Judge’s 
figure and show that he has not stirred throughout 
the hours of darkness. They follow the shadows, in 
changeful sport, across his unchanging features. They 
gleam upon his watch. His grasp conceals the dial. 
plate ; but we know that the faithful hands have met; 
for one of the city clocks tells midnight. 

A man of sturdy understanding, like Judge Pyn- 
cheon, cares no more for twelve o'clock at night 
than for the corresponding hour of noon. However 
just the parallel drawn, in some of the preceding 
pages, between his Puritan ancestor and himself, it 
fails in this point. The Pyncheon of two centuries 
ago, In common with most of his contemporaries, pro- 
fessed his full belief in spiritual ministrations, al. 
though reckoning them chiefly of a malignant char- 
acter. The Pyncheon of to-night, who sits in yonder 
arm-chair, believes in no such nonsense. Such, at 
least, was his creed, some few hours since. His hair 
will not bristle, therefore, at the stories which — in 
times when chimney-corners had benches in them, 
where old people sat poking into the ashes of the past, 
and raking out traditions like live coals — used to be 
told about this very room of his ancestral house. In 
fact, these tales are too absurd to bristle even child- 
hood’s hair. What sense, meaning, or moral, for ex- 
ample, such as even ghost-stories should be suscepti- 
ble of, can be traced in the ridiculous legend, that, at 
midnight, all the dead Pyncheons are bound to assem- 
ble in this parlor? And, pray, for what? Why, to 
see whether the portrait of their ancestor still keeps 
its place upon the wall, in compliance with his testa- 
mentary directions! Is it worth while to come out vi 
their graves for that ? 


630 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


We are tempted to make a little sport with the idea, 
Ghost-stories are hardly to be treated seriously, any 
longer. The family-party of the defunct Pyncheons, 
we presume, goes off in this wise. 

First comes the ancestor himself, in his black cloak 
steeple-hat, and trunk-breeches, girt about the waist 
with a leathern belt, in which hangs his steel-hilted 
sword ; he has a long staff in his hand, such as gentle. 
men in advanced life used to carry, as much for the 
dignity of the thing as for the support to be derived 
from it. He looks up at the portrait; a thing of no 
substance, gazing at its own painted image! All is 
safe. The picture is still there. The purpose of his 
brain has been kept sacred thus long after the man 
himself has sprouted up in graveyard grass. See! he 
lifts his ineffectual hand, and tries the frame. All 
safe! But is that a smile? —is it not, rather, a 
frown of deadly import, that darkens over the shadow 
of his features? The stout Colonel is dissatisfied ! 
So decided is his look of discontent as to impart ad- 
ditional distinctness to his features; through which, 
nevertheless, the moonlight passes, and flickers on the 
wall beyond. Something has strangely vexed the ances- 
tor! With a grim shake of the head, he turns away. 
Here come other Pyncheons, the whole tribe, in their 
half a dozen generations, jostling and elbowing one an- 
other, to reach the picture. We behold aged men and 
prandames, a clergyman with the Puritanic stiffness 
still in his garb and mien, and a red-coated officer of 
the old French war ; and there comes the shop-keeping 
Pyncheon of a century ago, with the ruffles turned 
back from his wrists; and there the periwigged and 
brocaded gentleman of the artist’s legend, with the 
beautiful and pensive Alice, who brings no pride out 


GOVERNOR PYNCHEON. 381 


of her virgin grave. All try the picture-frame. What 
do these ghostly people seek? A mother lifts her 
child, that his little hands may touch it! There is 
evidently a mystery about the picture, that perplexes 
these poor Pyncheons when they ought to be at rest. 
In a corner, meanwhile, stands the figure of an elderly 
man, in a leather jerkin and breeches, with a carpen- 
ter’s rule sticking out of his side pocket ; he points his 
finger at the bearded Colonel and his descendants, 
nodding, jeering, mocking, and finally bursting into 
obstreperous, though inaudible laughter. 

Indulging our fancy in this freak, we have partly 
lost the power of restraint and guidance. We distin 
guish an unlooked-for figure in our visionary scene. 
Among those ancestral people there is a young man, 
dressed in the very fashion of to-day: he wears a dark 
frock-coat, almost destitute of skirts, gray pantaloons, 
gaiter boots of patent leather, and has a finely wrought 
gold chain across his breast, and a little silver-headed 
whalebone stick in his hand. Were we to meet this 
figure at noonday, we should greet him as young Jaf- 
frey Pyncheon, the Judge’s only surviving child, who 
has been spending the last two years in foreign travel. 
If still in life, how comes his shadow hither? If dead, 
what a misfortune! The old Pyncheon property, to- 
gether with the great estate acquired by the young 
man’s father, would devolve on whom? On poor, 
foolish Clifford, gaunt Hepzibah, and rustic little 
Phebe! But another and a greater marvel greets 
us! Can we believe our eyes? A stout, elderly gen- 
tleman has made his appearance ; he has an aspect of 
eminent respectability, wears a black coat and panta- 
loons, of roomy width, and might be pronounced scru- 
pulously neat in his attire, but for a broad crimson 


882 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


stain across his snowy neckcloth and down his shirt 
bosom. Is it the Judge, or no? How can it be Judge 
Pyncheon? We discern his figure, as plainly as the 
flickering moonbeams can show us anything, still seated 
in the oaken chair! Be the apparition whose it may, 
it advances to the picture, seems to seize the frame, 
tries to peep behind it, and turns away, with a frown 
as black as the ancestral one. 

The fantastic scene just hinted at must by no means 
be considered as forming an actual portion of our story. 
We were betrayed into this brief extravagance by the 
quiver of the moonbeams ; they dance hand-in-hand 
with shadows, and are reflected in the looking-glass, 
which, you are aware, is always a kind of window or 
doorway into the spiritual world. We needed relief, 
moreover, from our too long and exclusive contempla- 
tion of that figure in the chair. This wild wind, too, 
has tossed our thoughts into strange confusion, but 
without tearing them away from their one determined 
centre. Yonder leaden Judge sits immovably upon 
our soul. Will he never stir again? We shall go 
mad unless he stirs! You may the better estimate his 
quietude by the fearlessness of a little mouse, which 
sits on its hind legs, in a streak of moonlight, close by 
Judge Pyncheon’s foot, and seems to meditate a jour- 
ney of exploration over this great black bulk. Ha! 
what has startled the nimble little mouse? It is the 
visage of grimalkin, outside of the window, where he 
appears to have posted himself for a deliberate watch. 
This grimalkin has a very ugly look. Is it a cat watch- 
ing for a mouse, or the devil for a human soul? Would 
we could scare him from the window! 

Thank Heaven, the night is wellnigh past! The 
moonbeams have no longer so silvery a gleam, nor 


GOVERNOR PYNCHEON. 333 


contrast so strongly with the blackness of the shadows 
among which they fall. They are paler, now; the 
shadows look gray, not black. The boisterous wind is 
hushed. What is the hour? Ah! the watch has at 
last ceased to tick; for the Judge’s forgetful fingers 
neglected to wind it up, as usual, at ten o’clock, being 
half an hour or so before his ordinary bedtime, — and 
it has run down, for the first time in five years. But 
the great world-clock of Time still keeps its beat. The 
dreary night — for, oh, how dreary seems its haunted 
waste, behind us ! — gives place to afresh, transparent 
cloudless morn. Blessed, blessed radiance! The day- 
beam — even what little of it finds its way into this 
always dusky parlor—seems part of the universal 
benediction, annulling evil, and rendering all goodness 
possible, and happiness attainable. Will Judge Pyn- 
cheon now rise up from his chair? Will he go forth, 
and receive the early sunbeams on his brow? Will 
he begin this new day, — which God has smiled upon, 
and blessed, and given to mankind, — will he begin 
it with better purposes than the many that have been 
spent amiss? Or are all the deep-laid schemes of yes- 
terday as stubborn in his heart, and as busy in his 
brain, as ever ? 

In this latter case, there is much to do. Will the 
Judge still insist with Hepzibah on the interview with 
Clifford ? Will he buy a safe, elderly gentleman’s 
horse? Will he persuade the purchaser of the old 
Pyncheon property to relinquish the bargain, in his 
favor? Will he see his family physician, and obtain 
a medicine that shall preserve him, to be an honor and 
blessing to his race, until the utmost term of patri- 
archal longevity? Will Judge Pyncheon, above all, 
make due apologies to that company of honorable 


884 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


friends, and satisfy them that his absence from the 
festive board was unavoidable, and so fully retrieve 
himself in their good opinion that he shall yet be Gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts ? And all these great purposes 
accomplished, will he walk the streets again, with that 
dog-day smile of elaborate benevolence, sultry enough 
to tempt flies to come and buzz in it? Or will he, 
after the tomb-like seclusion of the past day and night, 
go forth a humbled and repentant man, sorrowful, 
gentle, seeking no profit, shrinking from worldly honor, 
hardly daring to love God, but bold to love his fellow- 
man, and to do him what good he may? Will he bear 
about with him, —no odious grin of feigned benig- 
nity, insolent in its pretence, and loathsome in its false- 
hood, — but the tender sadness of a contrite heart, 
broken, at last, beneath its own weight of sin? For it 
is our belief, whatever show of honor he may have 
piled upon it, that there was heavy sin at the base of 
this man’s being. 

Rise up, Judge Pyncheon! The morning sunshine 
glimmers through the foliage, and, beautiful and holy 
as it is, shuns not to kindle up your face. Rise up, 
thou subtle, worldly, selfish, iron-hearted hypocrite, 
and make thy choice whether still to be subtle, worldly, 
selfish, iron-hearted, and hypocritical, or to tear these 
sins out of thy nature, though they bring the life 
blood with them! The Avenger is upon thee! Rise 
up, before it be too late ! 

What! Thou art not stirred by this last appeal? 
No, not a jot! And there we see a fly, — one of your 
common house-flies, such as are always buzzing on the 
window-pane, —: which has smelt out Governor Pyn- 
cheon, and alights, now on his forehead, now on his 
chin, and now, Heaven help us! is creeping over the 


GOVERNOR PYNCHEON. 335 


bridge of his nose, towards the would-be chief-magis- 
trate’s wide-open eyes! Canst thou not brush the fly 
away? Art thou too sluggish? Thou man, that hadst 
so many busy projects yesterday! Art thou too weak, 
that wast so powerful? Not brush away a fly? Nay, 
then, we give thee up! 

And hark! the shop-bell rings. After hours like 
these latter ones, through which we have borne our 
heavy tale, it is good to be made sensible that there is 
a living world, and that even this old, lonely mansion 
retains some manner of connection with it. We breathe 
more freely, emerging from Judge Pyncheon’s pres- 
ence into the street before the Seven Gables. 


b.4@ D.o 
ALICE’S POSIES. 


UncLE VENNER, trundling a wheelbarrow, was the 
earliest person stirring in the neighborhood the day 
after the storm. 

Pyncheon Street, in front of the House of the Seven 
Gables, was a far pleasanter scene than a by-lane, con- 
fined by shabby fences, and bordered with wooden 
dwellings of the meaner class, could reasonably be ex- 
pected to present. Nature made sweet amends, that 
morning, for the five unkindly days which had pre- 
ceded it. It would have been enough to live for, 
merely to look up at the wide benediction of the sky, or 
as much of it as was visible between the houses, genial 
once more with sunshine. Every object was agreeable, 
whether to be gazed at in the breadth, or examined 
more minutely. Such, for example, were the well- 
washed pebbles and gravel of the sidewalk; even the 
sky-reflecting pools in the centre of the street ; and the 
grass, now freshly verdant, that crept along the base 
of the fences, on the other side of which, if one peeped 
over, was seen the multifarious growth of gardens. 
Vegetable productions, of whatever kind, seemed more 
than negatively happy, in the juicy warmth and abun- 
dance of their life. The Pyncheon Elm, throughout 
its great circumference, was all alive, and full of the 
morning sun and a sweet-tempered little breeze, which 
lingered within this verdant sphere, and set a thousand 


ALICE’S POSIES. 337 


leafy tongues a-whispering all at once. This aged tree 
appeared to have suffered nothing from the gale. It 
had kept its boughs unshattered, and its full comple. 
ment of leaves ; and the whole in perfect verdure, ex 
cept a single branch, that, by the earlier change with 
which the elm-tree sometimes prophesies the autumn, 
had been transmuted to bright gold. It was like the 
golden branch that gained Atneas and the Sibyl ad- 
mittance into Hades. 

This one mystic branch hung down before the maiu 
entrance of the Seven Gables, so nigh the ground that 
any passer-by might have stood on tiptoe and plucked 
it off. Presented at the door, it would have been a 
symbol of his right to enter, and be made acquainted 
with all the secrets of the house. So little faith is due 
to external appearance, that there was really an invit- 
ing aspect over the venerable edifice, conveying an idea 
that its history must be a decorous and happy one, and 
such as would be delightful fora fireside tale. Its 
windows gleamed cheerfully in the slanting sunlight. 
The lines and tufts of green moss, here and there, 
seemed pledges of familiarity and sisterhood with Na- 
ture; as if this human dwelling-place, being of such 
oid date, had established its prescriptive title among 
primeval oaks and whatever other objects, by virtue of 
their long continuance, have acquired a gracious right 
to be. A person of imaginative temperament, while 
passing by the house, would turn, once and again, and 
peruse it well: its many peaks, consenting together in 
the clustered chimney ; the deep projection over its 
basement-story ; the arched window, imparting a look, 
if not of grandeur, yet of antique gentility, to the 
broken portal over which it opened; the luxuriance 
oi gigantic burdocks, near the threshold; he would 


_ VOL. Ir. 22 


2 


388 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


note all these characteristics, and be conscious of some 
thing deeper than he saw. He would conceive the 
mansion to have been the residence of the stubborn old 
Puritan, Integrity, who, dying in some forgotten gen- 
eration, had left a blessing in all its rooms and cham- 
bers, the efficacy of which was to be seen in the re- 
ligion, honesty, moderate competence, or upright pov- 
erty and solid happiness, of his descendants, to this 
day. 

One object, above all others, would take root in the 
amaginative observer’s memory. It was the great tuft 
of flowers, — weeds, you would have called them, only 
a week ago, — the tuft of crimson-spotted flowers, in 
the angle between the two front gables. The old peo- 
ple used to give them the name of Alice’s Posies, in 
remembrance of fair Alice Pyncheon, who was believed 
to have brought their seeds from Italy. They were 
flaunting in rich beauty and full bloom to-day, and 
seemed, as it were, a mystic expression that something 
within the house was consummated. 

It was but little after sunrise, when Uncle Venner 
made his appearance, as aforesaid, impelling a wheel- 
barrow along the street. He was going his matutinal 
rounds to collect cabbage-leaves, turnip-tops, potato- 
skins, and the miscellaneous refuse of the dinner-pot, 
which the thrifty housewives of the neighborhood were 
accustomed to put aside, as fit only to feed a pig. Un- 
ele Venner’s pig was fed entirely, and kept in prime 
order, on these eleemosynary contributions ; insomuch 
that the patched philosopher used to promise that, be- 
fore retiring to his farm, he would make a feast of the 
portly grunter, and invite all his neighbors to partake 
of the joints and spare-ribs which they had helped te 
fatten. Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon’s housekeeping had 


ALICE’S POSIES. 339 


49 greatly improved, since Clifford became a membes 
of the family, that her share of the banquet would hav 
been no lean one; and Uncle Venner, accordingly, 
was a good deal disappointed not to find the large 
earthen pan, full of fragmentary eatables, that ordina- 
rily awaited his coming at the back doorstep of the 
Seven Gables. 

“J never knew Miss Hepzibah so forgetful before,” 
said the patriarch to himself. ‘She must have had a 
dinner yesterday, — no question of that! She always 
has one, nowadays. So where’s the pot-liquor and 
potato-skins, [ ask? Shall I knock, and see if she’s 
stirring yet? No, no,—’twon’t do! If little Phebe 
was about the house, I should not mind knocking ; but 
Miss Hepzibah, likely as not, would scowl down at me 
out of the window, and look cross, even if she felt 
pleasantly. So, Ill come back at noon.” 

With these reflections, the old man was shutting the 
gate of the little back-yard. Creaking on its hinges, 
however, like every other gate and door about the 
premises, the sound reached the ears of the occupant 
of the northern gable, one of the windows of which 
had a side-view towards the gate. 

“Good morning, Uncle Venner!” said the daguerre- 
otypist, leaning out of the window. ‘“ Do you hear no- 
body stirring ?”’ 

“Not a soul,” said the man of patches. “ But 
that’s no wonder. ’T is barely half an hour past sun- 
rise, yet. But I’m really glad to see you, Mr. Hol- 
grave! There’s a strange, lonesome look about this 
side of the house; so that my heart misgave me, some- 
how or other, and I felt as if there was nobody alive 
in it. The front of the house looks a good deal cheer- 
ier; and Alice’s Posies are blooming there beautifully; 


840 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


and if I were a young man, Mr. Holgrave, my sweet 
heart should have one of those flowers in her bosom, 
though I risked my neck climbing for it! Well, and 
did the wind keep you awake last night ?”’ 

“It did, indeed!” answered «he artist, smiling. “ If 
[ were a believer in ghosts, — and I don’t quite know 
whether I am or not, —I should have concluded that 
all the old Pyncheons were running riot in the lower 
rooms, especially in Miss Hepzibah’s part of the house, 
But it is very quiet now.” 

“Yes, Miss Hepzibah will be apt to over-sleep her- 
self, after being disturbed, all night, with the racket,” 
said Uncle Venner. “ But it would be odd, now, 
would n’t it, if the Judge had taken both his cousins 
into the country along with him? I saw him go into 
the shop yesterday.” 

“ At what hour?” inquired Holgrave. 

“Oh, along in the forenoon,” said the old man. 
“Well, well! I must go my rounds, and so must my 
wheelbarrow. But I’ll be back here at dinner-time ; 
for my pig likes a dinner as well as a breakfast. No 
meal-time, and no sort of victuals, ever seems to come 
amiss to my pig. Good morning to you! And, Mr. 
Holgrave, if I were a young man, like you, I’d get 
one of Alice’s Posies, and keep it in water till Phoebe 
comes back.” 

“JT have heard,” said the daguerreotypist, as he 
drew in his head, “ that the water of Maule’s well suits 
those flowers best.” 

Here the conversation ceased, and Uncle Venner 
went on his way. For half an hour longer, nothing 
disturbed the repose of the Seven Gables; nor was 
there any visitor, except a carrier-boy, who, as he 
passed the front doorstep, threw down one of his news: 


ALICE’S POSIES. 341 
vapers; for Hepzibah, of late, had regularly taken it 


mh. After a while, there came a fat woman, making 
rodigious speed, and stumbling as she ran up the 
steps of the shop-door. Her face glowed with fire- 
heat, and, it being a pretty warm morning, she bub- 
bled and hissed, as it were, as if all a-fry with chim- 
ney-warmth, and summer-warmth, and the warmth of 
her own corpulent velocity. She tried the shop-door; 
it was fast. She tried it again, with so angry a jar 
that the bell tinkled angrily back at her. 

“The deuce take Old Maid Pyncheon!” muttered 
the irascible housewife. “Think of her pretending 
to set up a cent-shop, and then lying abed till noon! 
These are what she calls gentlefolk’s airs, I suppose! 
But Ill either start her ladyship, or break the door 
down ! ” 

She shook it accordingly, and the bell, having a 
spiteful little temper of its own, rang obstreperously, 
making its remonstrances heard, — not, indeed, by the 
ears for which they were intended, — but by a good 
lady on the opposite side of the street. She opened her 
window, and addressed the impatient applicant. 

“You'll find nobody there, Mrs. Gubbins.” 

“But [ must and will find somebody here!” cried 
Mrs. Gubbins, inflicting another outrage on the bell. 
“YT want a half-pound of pork, to fry some first-rate 
flounders, for Mr. Gubbins’s breakfast; and, lady or 
not, Old Maid Pyncheon shall get up and serve me 
with it !” 

“ But do hear reason, Mrs. Gubbins!” responded 
the lady opposite. “She, and her brother too, have 
both gone to their cousin, Judge Pyncheon’s at his 
country-seat. ‘There’s not a soul in the house, but 
that young daguerreotype-man that sleeps in the north 


§42 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


gable. I saw old Hepzibah and Clifford go away 
yesterday ; and a queer couple of ducks they were, 
paddling through the mud-puddles! They ’re gone 
I'll assure you.” 

“And how do you know they’re gone to the 
Judge’s?” asked Mrs. Gubbins. “ He’s a rich man; 
and there ’s been a quarrel between him and Hepzibah, 
this many a day because he won’t give her a living. 
That ’s the main reason of her setting up a cent-shop.” 

*‘ T know that well enough,” said the neighbor. ‘ But 
they ’re gone, —that’s one thing certain. And who 
but a biood relation, that could n’t help himself, 1 ask 
you, would take in that awful-tempered old maid, and 
that dreadful Clifford? That’s it, you may be sure.” 

Mrs. Gubbins took her departure, still brimming over 
with hot wrath against the absent Hepzibah. For an- 
other half-hour, or, perhaps, considerably more, there 
was almost as much quiet on the outside of the house 
as within. The elm, however, made a pleasant, cheer- 
ful, sunny sigh, responsive to the breeze that was else- 
where imperceptible ; a swarm of insects buzzed mer- 
rily under its drooping shadow, and became specks of 
light whenever they darted into the sunshine ; a locust 
sang, once or twice, in some inscrutable seclusion of the 
tree; and a solitary little bird, with plumage of pale 
gold, came and hovered about Alice’s Posies. 

At last our small acquaintance, Ned Higgins, trudged 
up the street, on his way to school; and happening, for 
the first time in a fortnight, to be the possessor of a 
cent, he could by no means get past the shop-door of 
the Seven Gables. But it would not open. Again and 
again, however, and half a dozen other agains, with the 
inexorable pertinacity of a child intent upon some ob 
ject important to itself, did he renew his efforts for ad 


ALICE’S POSIES. 343 


mittance. He had, doubtless, set his heart upon an ele 
phant; or, possibly, with Hamlet, he meant to eat a 
crocodile. In response to his more violent attacks, the 
bell gave, now and then, a moderate tinkle, but could 
not be stirred into clamor by any exertion of the little 
fellow’s childish and tiptoe strength. Holding by the 
door-handle, he peeped through a crevice of the cur 
tain, and saw that the inner door, communicating with 
the passage towards the parlor, was closed. 

*‘ Miss Pyncheon!” screamed the child, rapping on 
the window-pane, “I want an elephant!” 

There being no answer to several repetitions of the 
summons, Ned began to grow impatient; and his little 
pot of passion quickly boiling over, he picked up a 
stone, with a naughty purpose to fling it through the 
window; at the same time blubbering and sputtering 
with wrath. A man —one of two who happened to 
be passing by — caught the urchin’s arm. 

“‘ What ’s the trouble, old gentleman?” he asked. 

_ “T want old Hepzibah, or Phebe, or any of them!” 
answered Ned, sobbing. ‘They won’t open the door; 
and I can’t get my elephant!” 

“Go to school, you little seamp!” said the man. 
“There ’s another cent-shop round the corner. ’T is 
very strange, Dixey,” added he to his companion, 
“what ’s become of all these Pyncheons! Smith, the 
livery-stable keeper, tells me Judge Pyncheon put his 
horse up yesterday, to stand till after dinner, and has 
not taken him away yet. And one of the Judge’s hired 
men has been in, this morning, to make inquiry about 
him. He’s a kind of person, they say, that seldom 
breaks his habits, or stays out o’ nights.” 

‘Oh, he’ll turn up safe enough !” said Dixey. “ And 
as for Old Maid Pyncheon, take my word for it, she 


344 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


has run in debt, and gone off from her creditors. | 
foretold, you remember, the first morning she set uf 
shop, that her devilish scowl would frighten away cus 
tomers. They could n’t stand it!” 

“‘T never thought she ’d make it go,” remarked his 
friend. “This business of cent-shops is overdone 
among the womenfolks. My wife tried it, and lost five 
dollars on her outlay!” 

“Poor business!” said Dixey, shaking his head. 
“ Poor business ! ” 

In the course of the morning, there were various 
other attempts to open a communication with the sup- 
posed inhabitants of this silent and impenetrable man- 
sion. The man of root-beer came, in his neatly painted 
wagon, with a couple of dozen full bottles, to be ex- 
changed for empty ones; the baker, with a lot of 
crackers which Hepzibah had ordered for her retail 
custom ; the butcher, with a nice titbit which he fan- 
cied she would be eager to secure for Clifford. Had 
any observer of these proceedings been aware of the 
fearful secret hidden within the house, it would have 
affected him with a singular shape and modification of 
horror, to see the current of human life making this 
small eddy hereabouts, — whirling sticks, straws, and 
all such trifles, round and round, right over the black 
depth where a dead corpse lay unseen ! 

The butcher was so much in earnest with his sweet- 
bread of lamb, or whatever the dainty might be, that 
he tried every accessible door of the Seven Gables, 
and at length came round again to the shop, where he 
ordinarily found admittance. 

“It’s a nice article, and I know the old lady would 
jump at it,” said he to himself. ‘She can’t be gone 
away! In fifteen years that I have driven my cart 


ALICE’S POSIES. 845 


hrough Pyncheon Street, I’ve never known her to be 
way from home; though often enough, to be sure, a 
nan might knock all day without bringing her to the 
door. But that was when she’d only herself to pro- 
vide for.” 

Peeping through the same crevice of the curtain 
where, only a little while before, the urchin of ele 
phantine appetite had peeped, the butcher beheld the 
inner door, not closed, as the child had seen it, but 
ajar, and almost wide open. However it might have 
happened, it was the fact. Through the passage-way 
there was a dark vista into the lighter but still obscure 
interior of the parlor. It appeared to the butcher that 
he could pretty clearly discern what seemed to be the 
stalwart legs, clad in black pantaloons, of a man sit- 
ting in a large oaken chair, the back of which con- 
cealed all the remainder of his figure. This contempt- 
uous tranquillity on the part of an occupant of the 
house, in response to the butcher’s indefatigable efforts 
to attract notice, so piqued the man of flesh that he 
determined to withdraw. 

“So,” thought he, ‘“ there sits Old Maid Pyncheon’s 
bloody brother, while I’ve been giving myself all this 
trouble! Why, if a hog had n’t more manners, I’d 
stick him! [I call it demeaning a man’s business to 
trade with such people; and from this time forth, if 
they want a sausage or an ounce of liver, they shall 
run after the cart for it!” 

He tossed the titbit angrily into his cart, and drove 
off in a pet. 

Not a great while afterwards there was a sound of 
music turning the corner, and approaching down the 
street, with several intervals of silence, and then a re- 
aewed and nearer outbreak of brisk melody. A mob 


846 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


of children was seen moving onward, or stopping, in 
unison with the sound, which appeared to proceed 
from the centre of the throng; so that they were 
loosely bound together by slender strains of harmony 
and drawn along captive; with ever and anon an ac 
session of some little fellow in an apron and straw-hat. 
capering forth from door or gateway. Arriving unde: 
the shadow of the Pyncheon Elm, it proved to be th: 
Italian boy, who, with his monkey and show of pup» 
pets, had once before played his hurdy-gurdy beneath 
the arched window. The pleasant face of Phebe — 
and doubtless, too, the liberal recompense which she 
had flung him — still dwelt in his remembrance. His 
expressive features kindled up, as he recognized the 
spot where this trifling incident of his erratic life had 
chanced. He entered the neglected yard (now wilder 
than ever, with its growth of hog-weed and burdock), 
stationed himself on the doorstep of the main entrance, 
and, opening his show-box, began to play. ach in- 
dividual of the automatic community forthwith set to 
work, according to his or her proper vocation: the 
monkey, taking off his Highland bonnet, bowed and 
scraped to the by-standers most obsequiously, with 
ever an observant eye to pick up a stray cent; and 
the young foreigner himself, as he turned the crank of 
his machine, glanced upward to the arched window, 
expectant of a presence that vould make his music the 
livelier and sweeter. The throng of children stood 
near; some on the sidewalk; some within the yard ; two 
or three establishing themselves on the very door-step $ 
and one squatting on the threshold. Meanwhile, the 
locust kept singing in the great old Pyncheon Elm. 

‘“‘T don’t hear anybody in the house,” said one of the 
children to another. “The monkey won’t pick up any: 
thing here.” 


ALICE’S POSIES. 347 


«There is somebody at home,” affirmed the urchin 
gn the threshold. “I heard a step!” 

Still the young Italian’s eye turned sidelong up 
ward ; and it really seemed as if the touch of genuine, 
though slight and almost playful, emotion communi- 
cated a juicier sweetness to the dry, mechanical pro- 
cess of his minstrelsy. These wanderers are readily re- 
sponsive to any natural kindness — be it no more than 
a smile, or a word itself not understood, but only a 
warmth in it — which befalls them on the roadside of 
life. They remember these things, because they are 
the little enchantments which, for the instant, — for 
the space that reflects a landscape in a soap-bubble, — 
build up a home about them. Therefore, the Italian 
boy would not be discouraged by the heavy silence 
with which the old house seemed resolute to clog the 
vivacity of his instrument. He persisted in his melo- 
dious appeals; he still looked upward, trusting that his 
dark, alien countenance would soon be brightened by 
Pheebe’s sunny aspect. Neither could he be willing to 
depart without again beholding Clifford, whose sensi- 
bility, like Phcebe’s smile, had talked a kind of heart’s 
language to the foreigner. He repeated all his music 
over and over again, until his auditors were getting 
weary. So were the little wooden people in his show- 
box, and the monkey most of all. There was no re 
sponse, save the singing of the locust. 

“No children live in this house,” said a school-boy, 
at last. ‘* Nobody lives here but an old maid and an 
oldman. You’ll get nothing here! Why don’t you 
go along?” 

“You fool, you, why do you tell him?” whispered a 
shrewd little Yankee, caring nothing for the music, but 
# good deal for the cheap rate at which it was had 


348 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


“ Let him play as long as he likes! If there’s nobods 
to pay him, that’s his own lookout!” 

Once more, however, the Italian ran over his round 
of melodies. To the common observer — who could 
understand nothing of the case, except the music and 
the sunshine on the hither side of the door — it might 
have been amusing to watch the pertinacity of the 
street-performer. Will he succeed at last? Will that 
stubborn door be suddenly flung open? Will a group 
of joyous children, the young ones of the house, come 
dancing, shouting, laughing, into the open air, and 
cluster round the show-box, looking with eager merri- 
ment at the puppets, and tossing each a copper for 
long-tailed Mammon, the monkey, to pick up ? 

But to us, who know the inner heart of the Seven 
Gables as well as its exterior face, there is a ghastly 
effect in this repetition of light popular tunes at its 
door-step. It would be an ugly business, indeed, if 
Judge Pyncheon (who would not have cared a fig for 
Paganini’s fiddle in his most harmonious mood) should 
make his appearance at the door, with a bloody shirt- 
bosom, and a grim frown on his swarthily white visage, 
and motion the foreign vagabond away! Was ever 
before such a grinding out of jigs and waltzes, where 
nobody was in the cue to dance? Yes, very often. 
This contrast, or intermingling of tragedy with mirth, 
happens daily, hourly, momently. The gloomy and 
desolate old house, deserted of life, and with awful 
Death sitting sternly in its solitude, was the emblem 
of many a human heart, which, nevertheless, is com. 
pelled to hear the thrill and echo of the world’s gayety 
around it. 

Before the conclusion of the Italian’s performance, 
a couple of men happened to be passing, on their way 
to dinner. 


ALICE’S POSIES. 845 


«“ f say, you young French fellow!” called out one 


vf them, — “‘come away from that doorstep, and go 
somewhere else with your nonsense! The Pyncheon 
family live there; and they are in great trouble, just 
about this time. They don’t feel musical to-day. It 
is reported all over town that Judge Pyncheon, who 
pwns the house, has been murdered; and the city 
marshal is going to look into the matter. So be off 
with you, at once!” 

As the Italian shouldered his hurdy-gurdy, he saw 
on the doorstep a card, which had been covered, all 
the morning, by the newspaper that the carrier had 
flung upon it, but was now shuffled into sight. He 
picked it up, and perceiving something written in pen- 
cil, gave it to the man to read. In fact, it was an en- 
graved card of Judge Pyncheon’s with certain pencilled 
memoranda on the back, referring to various busi- 
nesses which it had been his purpose to transact dur- 
ing the preceding day. It formed a prospective epit 
ome of the day’s history; only that affairs had not 
turned out altogether in accordance with the pro- 
gramme. The card must have been lost from the 
Judge’s vest-pocket, in his preliminary attempt to gain 
access by the main entrance of the house. Though 
well soaked with rain, it was still partially legible. 

“Look here, Dixey!” cried the man. “This has 
something to do with Judge Pyncheon. See! — here’s 
his name printed on it; and here, I suppose, is some 
of his handwriting.” 

“ Let ’s go tothe city marshal with it! ” said Dixey. 
‘Tt may give him just the .tew he wants. After all,” 
whispered he in his companion’s ear, “it would be no 
wonder if the Judge has gone into that door and never 
some out again! A certain cousin of his may hav, 


850 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


been at his old tricks. And Old Maid Pyncheon hav 
ing got herself in debt by the cent-shop,—and the 
Judge’s pocket-book being well filled, — and bad blood 
amongst them already! Put all these things together 
and see what they make! ” 

“Hush, hush!” whispered the other. ‘“ It seems 
like a sin to be the first to speak of such a thing. 
But I think, with you, that we had better go to the 
city marshal.” 

“ Yes, yes!” said Dixey. ‘“ Well! —I always said 
there was something devilish in that woman’s scowl!” 

The men wheeled about, accordingly, and retraced 
their steps up the street. The Italian, also, made the 
best of his way off, with a parting glance up at the 
arched window. As for the children, they took to 
their heels, with one accord, and scampered as if some 
giant or ogre were in pursuit, until, at a good distance 
from the house, they stopped as suddenly and simulta 
neously as they had set out. Their susceptible nerves 
took an indefinite alarm from what they had over. 
heard. Looking back at the grotesque peaks and 
shadowy angles of the old mansion, they fancied a 
gloom diffused about it which no brightness of the sun- 
shine could dispel. An imaginary Hepzibah scowled 
and shook her finger at them, from several windows 
at the same moment. An imaginary Clifford — for 
(and it would have deeply wounded him to know it) 
he had always been a horror to these small people — 
stood behind the unreal Hepzibah, making awful gese 
tures, in a faded dressing-gown. Children are even 
more apt, if possible, than grown people, to catch the 
contagion of a panic terror. For the rest of the day, 
the more timid went whole streets about, for the sake 
of avoiding the Seven Gables; while the bolder sig- 


a SSS 
‘S oe 


Pa 
> Ao = 


> wr : \St 
soos Sea 





AND THEN THE PRETTY FIGURE 


? 


A STRAW BONNET 


OF A YOUNG GIRL 





ALICE’S PUSIES. 351 


nalized their hardihood by challenging their comrades 
to race past the mansion at full speed. 

It could not have been more than half an hour after 
the disappearance of the Italian boy, with his unsea- 
sonable melodies, when a cab drove down the street. 
It stopped beneath the Pyncheon Elm; the cabman 
took a trunk, a canvas bag, and a bandbox, from the 
top of his vehicle, and deposited them on the doorstep 
of the old house ; a straw bonnet, and then the pretty 
figure of a young girl, came into view from the inte- 
rior of the cab. It was Phebe! Though not alto- 
gether so blooming as when she first tripped into our 
story, —for, in the few intervening weeks, her ex- 
periences had made her graver, more womanly, and 
deeper-eyed, in token of a heart that had begun to 
suspect its depths, — still there was the quiet glow of 
natural sunshine over her. Neither had she forfeited 
her proper gift of making things look real, rather than 
fantastic, within her sphere. Yet we feel it to be a 
questionable venture, even for Phcebe, at this junc- 
ture, to cross the threshold of the Seven Gables. Is 
her healthful presence potent enough to chase away 
the crowd of pale, hideous, and sinful phantoms, that 
have gained admittance there since her departure ? 
Or will she, likewise, fade, sicken, sadden, and grow 
into deformity, and be only another pallid phantom, 
to glide noiselessly up and down the stairs, and af- 
fright children as she pauses at the window ? 

At least, we would gladly forewarn the unsuspecting 
girl that there is nothing in human shape or substance 
to receive her, unless it be the figure of Judge Pyn- 
cheon, who— wretched spectacle that he is, and fright- 
ful in our remembrance, since our night-long vigil with 
atm | —~ still keeps his place in the oaken chair, 


852 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


Phoebe first tried the shop-door. It did not yield to 
her hand; and the white curtain, drawn across the 
window which formed the upper section of the door, 
struck her quick perceptive faculty as something un- 
usual. Without making another effort to enter here, 
she betook herself to the great portal, under the arched 
window. Finding it fastened, she knocked. A re- 
verberation came from the emptiness within. She 
knocked again, and a third time; and, listening in- 
tently, fancied that the floor creaked, as if Hepzibah 
were coming, with her ordinary tiptoe movement, to 
admit her. But so dead a silence ensued upon this 
imaginary sound, that she began to question whether 
she might not have mistaken the house, familiar as 
she thought herself with its exterior. 

Her notice was now attracted by a child’s voice, at 
some distance. It appeared to call her name. Look- 
ing in the direction whence it proceeded, Phoebe saw 
little Ned Higgins, a good way down the street, stamp- 
ing, shaking his head violently, making deprecatory 
gestures with both hands, and shouting to her at 
mouth-wide screech. 

“No, no, Phebe?” he screamed. ‘ Don’t you go 
in! There’s something wicked there! Don’t—don’t 
— don’t go in!” 

But, as the little personage could not be induced to 
approach near enough to explain himself, Phcebe con- 
cluded that he had been frightened, on some of his 
visits to the shop, by her cousin Hepzibah; for the 
good lady’s manifestations, in truth, ran about an 
equal chance of scaring children out of their wits, ar 
compelling them to unseemly laughter. Still, she felt 
the more, for this incident, how unaccountably silent 
and impenetrable the house had become. As her next 


ALICE’S POSIES. 358 


resort, Phoebe made her way into the garden, where 
on so warm and bright a day as the present, she had 
little doubt of finding Clifford, and perhaps Hepzibah 
also, idling away the noontide in the shadow of the 
arbor. Immediately on her entering the garden-gate, 
the family of hens half ran, half flew, to meet her; 
while a strange grimalkin, which was prowling under 
the parlor window, took to his heels, clambered hastily 
over the fence, and vanished. The arbor was vacan‘ 
~ and its floor, table, and circular bench were still damp 
and bestrewn with twiys, and the disarray of the past 
storm. The growth of the garden seemed to have got 
quite out of bounds; the weeds had taken advantage 
of Pheebe’s absence, and the long-continued rain, to 
run rampant over the flowers and kitchen-vegetables. 
Maule’s well had overflowed its stone border, and 
made a pool of formidable breadth in that corner of 
the garden. 

The impression of the whole scene was that of a 
spot where no human foot had left its print for many 
preceding days, — probably not since Pheebe’s depart- 
ure, —for she saw a side-comb of her own under the 
table of the arbor, where it must have fallen on the 
last afternoon when she and Clifford sat there. 

The girl knew that her two relatives were capable 
of far greater oddities than that of shutting them- 
selves up in their old house, as they appeared now to 
have done. Nevertheless, with indistinct misgivings 
of something amiss, and apprehensions to which she 
could not give shape, she approached the door that 
formed the customary communication between the 
house and garden. It was secured within, like the 
two which she had already tried. She knocked, how- 
ever; and immediately, as if the application had been 

VOL. III. 23 


854 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


expected, the door was drawn open, by a considerable 
exertion of some unseen person’s strength, not wide, 
but far enough to afford her a side-long entrance. As 
Hepzibah, in order not to expose herself to inspection 
from without, invariably opened a door in this man 
ner, Phcebe necessarily concluded that it was her 
cousin who now admitted her. 

Without hesitation, therefore, she stepped across 
the threshold, and had no sooner entered than the 
door closed behind her. 


x 
THE FLOWER OF EDEN. 


Pua@se, coming so suddenly from the sunny day: 
light, was altogether bedimmed in such density of 
shadow as lurked in most of the passages of the old 
house. She was not at first aware by whom she had 
been admitted. Before her eyes had adapted them- 
selves to the obscurity, a hand grasped her own, with 
a firm but gentle and warm pressure, thus imparting 
a welcome which caused her heart to leap and thrill 
with an indefinable shiver of enjoyment. She felt her- 
self drawn along, not towards the parlor, but into a 
large and unoccupied apartment, which had formerly 
been the grand reception-room of the Seven Gables. 
The sunshine came freely into all the uncurtained win- 
dows of this room, and fell upon the dusty floor ; so 
that Phebe now clearly saw — what, indeed, had been 
no secret, after the encounter of a warm hand with 
hers— that it was not Hepzibah nor Clifford, but 
Holgrave, to whom she owed her reception. The sub- 
tile, intuitive communication, or, rather, the vague 
and formless impression of something to be told, had 
made her yield unresistingly to his impulse. Without 
taking away her hand, she looked eagerly in his face, 
not quick to forebode evil, but unavoidably conscious 
that the state of the family had changed since her de. 
parture, and therefore anxious for an explanation. 

The artist looked paler than ordinary ; there was a 


856 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


thoughtful and severe contraction of his forehead, 
tracing a deep, vertical line between the eyebrows. 
His smile, however, was full of genuine warmth, and 
had in it a joy, by far the most vivid expression that 
Pheebe had ever witnessed, shining out of the New 
England reserve with which MHolgrave habitually 
masked whatever lay near his heart. It was the look 
wherewith a man, brooding alone over some fearful 
object, in a dreary forest, or illimitable desert, would 
recognize the familiar aspect of his dearest friend, 
bringing up all the peaceful ideas that belong to home, 
and the gentle current of every-day affairs. And yet, 
as he felt the necessity of responding to her look of 
inquiry, the smile disappeared. 

“T ought not to rejoice that you have come, Phe- 
be,” said he. “ We meet at a strange moment!” 

** What has happened ?”’ she exclaimed. ‘ Why is 
the house so deserted? Where are Hepzibah and 
Clifford?” 

“Gone! I cannot imagine where they are!” an- 
swered Holgrave. ‘“ We are alone in the house! ” 

“¢ Hepzibah and Clifford gone?” cried Phoebe. “1 
vs not possible! And why have you brought me into 
this room, instead of the parlor? Ah, something ter- 
rible has happened! I must run and see!” 

“No, no, Phebe!” said Holgrave, holding her 
back. “Itis as I have told you. They are gone, and 
I know not whither. <A terrible event has, indeed, 
happened, but not to them, nor, as I undoubtingly be- 
lieve, through any agency of theirs. If I read your 
character rightly, Phebe,” he continued, fixing his 
eyes on hers, with stern anxiety, intermixed with ten- 
derness, “‘ gentle as you are, and seeming to have your 
sphere among common things, you yet possess re 





“TELL ME! — TELL ME!”’ SAID PHBE, ALL IN A 
TREMBLE 





THE FLOWER OF EDEN. 857 


markable strength. You have wonderful poise, and a 
faculty which, when tested, will prove itself capable of 
dealing with matters that fall far out of the ordinary 
rule.” 

“Oh no, I am very weak!” replied Phebe, trem. 
bling. ‘ But tell me what has happened!” 

“You are strong!” persisted Holgrave. ‘ You 
must be both strong and wise; for I am all astray, 
and need your counsel. It may be you can suggest 
the one right thing to do!” 

“Tell me! — tell me!” said Phebe, all in a trem- 
ble. ‘It oppresses, — it terrifies me, — this mystery! 
Anything else I can bear!” 

The artist hesitated. Notwithstanding what he had 
just said, and most sincerely, in regard to the self- 
balancing power with which Phebe impressed him, it 
still seemed almost wicked to bring the awful secret of 
yesterday to her knowledge. It was like dragging a 
hideous shape of death into the cleanly and cheerful 
space before a household fire, where it would present 
all the uglier aspect, amid the decorousness of every- 
thing about it. Yet it could not be concealed from 
her; she must needs know it. 

“¢ Phoebe,” said he, ‘‘do you remember this? ” 

He put into her hand a daguerreotype; the same 
that he had shown her at their first interview in the 
garden, and which so strikingly brought out the hard 
and relentless traits of the original. 

“What has this to do with Hepzibah and Clif- 
ford?” asked Phoebe, with impatient surprise that 
Holgrave should so trifle with her at such a moment. 
“It is Judge Pyncheon! You have shown it to me 
before ! ” 

* But here is the same face, taken within this halé 


858 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


hour,” said the artist, presenting her with anothet 
miniature. ‘I had just finished it, when I heard you 
at the door.” 

“This is death!’ shuddered Phcebe, turning very 
pale. ‘Judge Pyncheon dead !” 

‘Such as there represented,” said Holgrave, “ he 
sits in the next room. The Judge is dead, and Clif. 
ford and Hepzibah have vanished! I know no more. 
All beyond is conjecture. On returning to my solitary 
chamber, last evening, I noticed no light, either in the 
parlor, or Hepzibah’s room, or Clifford’s; no stir nor 
footstep about the house. This morning, there was 
the same death-like quiet. From my window, I over- 
heard the testimony of a neighbor, that your relatives 
were seen leaving the house, in the midst of yester- 
day’s storm. A rumor reached me, too, of Judge Pyn- 
cheon being missed. A feeling which I cannot de- 
scribe — an indefinite sense of some catastrophe, or 
consummation — impelled me to make my way into 
this part of the house, where I discovered what you 
see. As a point of evidence that may be useful to 
Clifford, and also as a memorial valuable to myself, 
— for, Phceebe, there are hereditary reasons that con- 
nect me strangely with that man’s fate, — I used the 
means at my disposal to preserve this pictorial record 
of Judge Pyncheon’s death.” 

Even in her agitation, Phebe could not help re- 
marking the calmness of Holgrave’s demeanor. He 
appeared, it is true, to feel the whole awfulness of the 
Judge’s death, yet had received the fact into his mind 
without any mixture of surprise, but as an event pre 
ordained, happening inevitably, and so fitting itseli 
into past occurrences that it could almost have beep 
prophesied. 


THE FLOWER OF EDEN. 309 


“Why have you not thrown open the doors, and 
called in witnesses?” inquired she, with a painful 
shudder. ‘It is terrible to be here alone!” 

“But Clifford!” suggested the artist. ‘ Clifford 
and Hepzibah! We must consider what is best to be 
done in their behalf. It is a wretched fatality that 
they should have disappeared! Their flight will throw 
the worst coloring over this event of which it is suscep- 
tible. Yet how easy is the explanation, to those who 
know them! Bewildered and terror-stricken by the 
similarity of this death to a former one, which was at- 
tended with such disastrous consequences to Clifford, 
they have had no idea but of removing themselves from 
the scene. How miserably unfortunate! Had Hepzi- 
bah but shrieked aloud, — had Clifford flung wide the 
door, and proclaimed Judge Pyncheon’s death, — it 
would have been, however awful in itself, an event 
fruitful of good consequences to them. As I view it, 
it would have gone far towards obliterating the black 
stain on Clifford’s character.” 

“ And how,” asked Phebe, “could any good come 
from what is so very dreadful? ” 

“* Because,” said the artist, “if the matter can be 
fairly considered and candidly interpreted, it must be 
evident that Judge Pyncheon could not have come un- 
fairly to his end. This mode of death has been an 
idiosyncrasy with his family, for generations past; 
not often occurring, indeed, but, when it does occur. 
usually attacking individuals about the Judge’s time 
of life, and generally in the tension of some menta. 
crisis, or, perhaps, in an access of wrath. Old Maule’s 
prophecy was probably founded on a knowledge of thir 
physical predisposition in the Pyncheon race. Now, 
there is a minute and almost exact similarity in the 


360 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


appearances connected with the death that occurred 
yesterday and those recorded of the death of Clifford’s 
uncle thirty years ago. It is true, there was a certain 
arrangement of circumstances, unnecessary to be re- 
counted, which made it possible — nay, as men look 
at these things, probable, or even certain —that old 
Jaffrey Pyncheon came to a violent death, and by 
Clifford’s hands.” 

‘Whence came those circumstances?” exclaimed 
Pheebe; ‘“ he being innocent, as we know him to be!” 

“They were arranged,” said Holgrave, — “ at least 
such has long been my conviction, — they were ar- 
ranged after the uncle’s death, and before it was 
made public, by the man who sits in yonder parlor. 
His own death, so like that former one, yet attended 
by none of those suspicious circumstances, seems the 
stroke of God upon him, at once a punishment for his 
wickedness, and making plain the innocence of Clif- 
ford. But this flight, — it distorts everything! He 
may be in concealment, near at hand. Could we but 
bring him back before the discovery of the Judge’s 
death the evil might be rectified.” 

“We must not hide this thing a moment longer!” 
said Phebe. “It is dreadful to keep it so closely in 
our hearts. Clifford is innocent. God will make it 
manifest! Let us throw open the doors, and call all 
the neighborhood to see the truth! ” 

“You are right, Phebe,’ rejoimed Holgrave. 
“ Doubtless you are right.” 

Yet the artist did not feel the horror, which was 
proper to Phoebe’s sweet and order-loving character, at 
thus finding herself at issue with society, and brought 
in contact with an event that transcended ordinary 
rules. Neither was he in haste, like her, to betake 










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HER EYES DROP. ‘‘YOU KNOW I LOVE YoU!” 





THE FLOWER OF EDEN. 361 


himself within the precincts of common life. On the 
contrary, he gathered a wild enjoyment, — as it were, 
a flower of strange beauty, growing in a desolate spot, 
and blossoming in the wind, — such a flower of mo- 
mentary happiness he gathered from his present po- 
sition. It separated Phoebe and himself from the 
world, and bound them to each other, by their exclu- 
sive knowledge of Judge Pyncheon’s mysterious death, 
and the counsel which they were forced to hold respect- 
ing it. The secret, so long as it should continue such, 
kept them within the circle of a spell, a solitude in 
the midst of men, a remoteness as entire as that of an 
island in mid-ocean; once divulged, the ocean would 
flow betwixt them, standing on its widely sundered 
shores. Meanwhile, all the circumstances of their sit- 
uation seemed to draw them together ; they were like 
two children who go hand in hand, pressing closely 
to one another’s side, through a shadow-haunted pas- 
sage. The image of awful Death, which filled the 
house, held them united by his stiffened grasp. 

These influences hastened the development of emo- 
tions that might not otherwise have flowered so. Pos- 
sibly, indeed, it had been Holgrave’s purpose to let 
them die in their undeveloped germs. 

“Why do we delay so?” asked Phebe. ‘“ This se- 
eret takes away my breath! Let us throw open the 
doors!” 

“Tn all our lives there can never come another mo- 
ment like this!” said Holgrave. ‘ Phcebe, is it all 
terror ?— nothing but terror? Are you conscious of 
no joy, as I am, that has made this the only point of 
life worth living for ?” 

“Tt seems a sin,” replied Phebe, trembling, “to 
think of joy at such a time!” 


862 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


“ Could you but know, Pheebe, how it was with me 
the hour before you came!” exclaimed the artist. “ A 
dark, cold, miserable hour! ‘The presence of yonder 
dead man threw a great black shadow over everything ; 
he made the universe, so far as my perception could 
reach, a scene of guilt and of retribution more dread- 
ful than the guilt. The sense of it took away my 
youth. I never hoped to feel young again! The 
world looked strange, wild, evil, hostile ; my past life, 
so lonesome and dreary; my future, a shapeless gloom, 
which I must mould into gloomy shapes! But, Phebe, 
you crossed the threshold ; and hope, warmth, and joy 
came in with you! The black moment became at once 
a blissful one. It must not pass without the spoken 
word. I love you! ” 

“‘ Flow can you love a simple girl like me?” asked 
Phebe, compelled by his earnestness to speak. ‘ You 
have many, many thoughts, with which I should try in 
vain to sympathize. And I, —I, too, —I have ten- 
dencies with which you would sympathize as little. 
That is less matter. But I have not scope enough to 
make you happy.” 

* You are my only possibility of happiness!” an- 
swered Holgrave. “I have no faith in it, except as 
you bestow it on me! ” 

“ And then —I am afraid!” continued Pheebe, 
shrinking towards Holgrave, even while she told him 
so frankly the doubts with which he affected her 
“You will lead me out of my own quiet path. You 
will make me strive to follow you where it is pathless. 
I cannot do so. It is not my nature. I shall sink 
down and perish !” 

“ Ah, Phebe! ” exclaimed Holgrave, with almost a 
ugh, and a smile that was burdened with thought 


THE FLOWER OF EDEN. 368 


* Tt will be far otherwise than as you forebode. The 
world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. 
The happy man inevitably confines himself within an- 
cient limits. I have a presentiment that, hereafter, it 
will be my lot to set out trees, to make fences, — per- 
haps, even, in due time, to build a house for another 
generation, — in a word, to conform myself to laws, 
and the peaceful practice of society. Your poise will 
be more powerful than any oscillating tendency of 
mine.” 

“ T would not have it so!” said Phebe, earnestly. 

** Do you love me?” asked Holgrave. ‘“ If we love 
one another, the moment has room for nothing more. 
Let us pause upon it, and be satisfied. Do you love 
me, Phcebe ?” 

“You look into my heart,” said she, letting her eyes 
drop. ‘ You know I love you! ” 

And it was in this hour, so full of doubt and awe, 
that the one miracle was wrought, without which every 
human existence is a blank. The bliss which makes 
all things true, beautiful, and holy shone around this 
youth and maiden. They were conscious of nothing 
sad nor old. They transfigured the earth, and made 
it Eden again, and themselves the two first dwellers in 
it. ‘The dead man, so close beside them, was forgot- 
ten. At such a crisis, there is no death; for immor- 
tality is revealed anew, and embraces everything in its 
hallowed atmosphere. 

But how soon the heavy earth-dream settled down 
again | 

“ Hark!” whispered Phebe. “Somebody is at the 
street-door ! ” 

“* Now let us meet the world!” said Holgrave. ‘ No 
doubt, the rumor of Judge Pyncheon’s visit to this 


864 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


house, and the flight of Hepzibah and Clifford, % 
about to lead to the investigation of the premises. We 
have no way but to meet it. Let us open the door at 
once.” 

But, to their surprise, before they could reach the 
street-door, — even before they quitted the room iz 
which the foregoing interview had passed,—they heard 
footsteps in the farther passage. The door, therefore 
which they supposed to be securely locked, — whicl 
Holgrave, indeed, had seen to be so, and at which 
Pheebe had vainly tried to enter, — must have been 
opened from without. The sound of footsteps was not 
harsh, bold, decided, and intrusive, as the gait of 
strangers would naturally be, making authoritative 
entrance into a dwelling where they knew themselves 
unwelcome. It was feeble, as of persons either weak 
or weary; there was the mingled murmur of two 
voices, familiar to both the listeners. 

“Can it be?” whispered Holgrave. 

“Tt is they!” answered Phebe. “ Thank God! — 
thank God!” 

And then, as if in sympathy with Pheebe’s whis- 
pered ejaculation, they heard Hepzibah’s voice, more 
distinctly. 

“Thank God, my brother, we are at home! ” 

“ Well! — Yes! — thank God!” responded Clif 
ford. “A dreary home, Hepzibah! But you hav 
done well to bring me hither! Stay! That parlor 
door is open. I cannot pass by it! Let me go and 
rest me in the arbor, where I used, —oh, very long 
ago, it seems to me, after what has befallen us, — 
where I used to be so happy with little Phebe!” 

But the house was not altogether so dreary as Clif 
ford imagined it. They had not made many steps, ~ 


‘“oARK!’’ WHISPERED PHBE. ‘‘SOMEBODY IS AT THE STREET- 
DOOR’ 








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THE FLOWER OF EDEN. 365 


m truth, they were lingering in the entry, with the list- 
lessness of an accomplished purpose, uncertain what 
to do next, — when Phebe ran to meet them. On be. 
holding her, Hepzibah burst into tears. With all her 
might, she had staggered onward beneath the burden 
of grief and responsibility, until now that it was safe 
to fling it down. Indeed, she had not energy to fling 
it down, but had ceased to uphold it, and suffered 
it to press her to the earth. Clifford appeared the 
stronger of the two. 

“It is our own little Phoebe! — Ah! and Holgrave 
with her,” exclaimed he, with a glance of keen and 
delicate insight, and a smile, beautiful, kind, but mel- 
ancholy. “I thought of you both, as we came down 
the street, and beheld Alice’s Posies in full bloom. 
And so the flower of Eden has bloomed, likewise, in 
this old, darksome house to-day.” 


X XI, 
THE DEPARTURE. 


‘THE sudden death of so prominent a member of tné 
social world as the Honorable Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon 
created a sensation (at least, in the circles more im. 
mediately connected with the deceased) which had 
hardly quite subsided in a fortnight. 

It may be remarked, however, that, of all the events 
which constitute a person’s biography, there is scarcely 
one — none, certainly, of anything like a similar im- 
portance —to which the world so easily reconciles it- 
self as to his death. In most other cases and contin- 
gencies, the individual is present among us, mixed up 
with the daily revolution of affairs, and affording a 
definite point for observation. At his decease, there 
is only a vacancy, and a momentary eddy, — very 
small, as compared with the apparent magnitude oi 
the ingurgitated object, — and a bubble or two, ascend- 
ing out of the black depth and bursting at the surface. 
As regarded Judge Pyncheon, it seemed probable, at 
first blush, that the mode of his final departure might 
give him a larger and longer posthumous vogue than 
ordinarily attends the memory of a distinguished man. 
But when it came to be understood, on the highest pro- 
fessional authority, that the event was a natural, and 
-— except for some unimportant particulars, denoting 
2, slight idiosyncrasy — by no means an unusual form 


of death, the public, with its customary alacrity, pro 


THE DEPARTURE. 367 


ceeded to forget that he had ever lived. In short, the 
honorable Judge was beginning to be a stale subject 
before half the county newspapers had found time to 
put their columns in mourning, and publish his exceed- 
ingly eulogistic obituary. 

Nevertheless, creeping darkly through the places 
which this excellent person had haunted in his life. 
time, there was a hidden stream of private talk, such 
as it would have shocked all decency to speak loudly 
at the street-corners. It is very singular, how the fact 
of a man’s death often seems to give people a truer 
idea of his character, whether for good or evil, than 
they have ever possessed while he was living and act- 
ing among them. Death is so genuine a fact that it 
excludes falsehood, or betrays its emptiness; it is a 
touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors the 
baser metal. Could the departed, whoever he may be, 
return jn a week after his decease, he would almost in- 
variably find himself at a higher or lower point than 
he had formerly occupied, on the scale of public ap- 
preciation. But the talk, or scandal, to which we now 
allude, had reference to matters of no less old a date 
than the supposed murder, thirty or forty years ago, 
of the late Judge Pyncheon’s uncle. The medical 
opinion, with regard to his own recent and regretted 
decease, had almost entirely obviated the idea that a 
murder was committed in the former case. Yet, as 
the record showed, there were circumstances irrefraga- 
bly indicating that some person had gained access to 
old Jaffrey Pyncheon’s private apartments, at or near 
the moment of his death. His desk and private draw- 
ers, in a room contiguous to his bedchamber, had been 
ransacked ; money and valuable articles were missing ; 
there was a bloody hand-print on the old man’s liner ; 


368 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


and, by a powerfully welded chain of deductive evi 
dence, the guilt of the robbery and apparent murder 
had been fixed on Clifford, then residing with his uncle 
in the House of the Seven Gables. 

Whencesoever originating, there now arose a theory 
that undertook so to account for these circumstances 
as to exclude the idea of Clifford’s agency. Many 
persons affirmed that the history and elucidation ot 
the facts, long so mysterious, had been obtained by the 
daguerreotypist from one of those mesmerical seers, 
who, nowadays, so strangely perplex the aspect of hu- 
man affairs, and put everybody’s natural vision to the 
blush, by the marvels which they see with their eyes 
shut. 

According to this version of the story, Judge Pyn- 
cheon, exemplary as we have portrayed him in our 
narrative, was, in his youth, an apparently irreclaim- 
able scapegrace. The brutish, the animal instincts, 
as is often the case, had been developed earlier than 
the intellectual qualities, and the force of character, 
for which he was afterwards remarkable. He had 
shown himself wild, dissipated, addicted to low pleas- 
ures, little short of ruffianly in his propensities, and 
recklessly expensive, with no other resources than 
the bounty of his uncle. This course of conduct had 
alienated the old bachelor’s affection, once strongly 
fixed upon him. Now it is averred, — but whether 
on authority available in a court of justice, we da 
not pretend to have investigated, — that the young 
man was tempted by the devil, one night, to search 
his uncle’s private drawers, to which he had unsus- 
pected means of access. While thus criminally oc- 
cupied, he was startled by the opening of the cham. 
ber-door. There stood old Jaffrey Pyncheon, in his 


THE DEPARTURE. 369 


nightclothes! The surprise of such a discovery, his 
agitation, alarm, and horror, brought on the crisis oi 
a disorder to which the old bachelor had an hered- 
itary liability; he seemed to choke with blood, and 
fell upon the floor, striking his temple a heavy blow 
against the corner of a table. What was to be done? 
The old man was surely dead! Assistance would 
come too late! What a misfortune, indeed, should it 
come too soon, since his reviving consciousness would 
bring the recollection of the ignominious offence which 
he had beheld his nephew in the very act of com- 
mitting ! 

But he never did revive. With the cool hardihood 
that always pertained to him, the young man continued 
his search of the drawers, and found a will, of recent 
date, in favor of Clifford, — which he destroyed, — 
and an older one, in his own favor, which he suffered 
to remain. But before retiring, Jaffrey bethought 
himself of the evidence, in these ransacked drawers, 
that some one had visited the chamber with sinister 
purposes. Suspicion, unless averted, might fix upon 
the real offender. In the very presence of the dead 
man, therefore, he laid a scheme that should free him- 
self at the expense of Clifford, his rival, for whose 
character he had at once a contempt and a repug- 
nance. Itis not probable, be it said, that he acted 
with any set purpose of involving Clifford in a charge 
of murder. Knowing that his uncle did not die by 
violence, it may not have occurred to him, in the hurry 
of the crisis, that such an inference might be drawn. 
But, when the affair took this darker aspect, Jaffrey’s 
previous steps had already pledged him to those which 
remained. So craftily had he arranged the circum- 
stances, that, at Clifford’s trial, his cousin hardly 


VOL. III. 24 


870 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


found it necessary to swear to anything false, but only. 
to withhold the one decisive explanation, by refraining 
to state what he had himself done and witnessed. 

Thus Jaffrey Pyncheon’s inward criminality, as re- 
garded Clifford, was, indeed, black and damnable; 
while its mere outward show and positive commission 
was the smallest that could possibly consist with so 
great asin. This is just the sort of guilt that a man 
of eminent respectability finds it easiest to dispose of. 
It was suffered to fade out of sight or be reckoned 
a venial matter, in the Honorable Judge Pyncheon’s 
long subsequent survey of his own life. He shuffled 
it aside, among the forgotten and forgiven frailties of 
his youth, and seldom thought of it again. 

We leave the Judge to his repose. He could not 
be styled fortunate at the hour of death. Unknow- 
ingly, he was a childless man, while striving to add 
more wealth to his only child’s inheritance. Hardly 
a week after his decease, one of the Cunard steamers 
brought intelligence of the death, by cholera, of Judge 
Pyncheon’s son, just at the point of embarkation for 
his native land. By this misfortune Clifford became 
rich; so did Hepzibah; so did our little village maid- 
en, and, through her, that sworn foe of wealth and 
all manner of conservatism, — the wild reformer, — 
Holgrave ! 

It was now far too late in Clifford’s life for the good 
opinion of society to be worth the trouble and anguish 
of a formal vindication. What he needed was the 
love of a very few; not the admiration, or even the 
respect, of the unknown many. The latter might prob- 
ably have been won for him, had those on whom the 
guardianship of his welfare had fallen deemed it ad- 
visable to expose Clifford to a miserable resuscitation 


THE DEPARTURE. oT1 


of past ideas, when the condition of whatever comfort 
he might expect lay in the calm of forgetfulness. After 
such wrong as he had suffered, there is no repara- 
tion. The pitiable mockery of it, which the world 
might have been ready enough to offer, coming so 
long after the agony had done its utmost work, would 
have been fit only to provoke bitterer laughter than 
poor Clifford was ever capable of. It is a truth (and 
it would be a very sad one but for the higher hopes 
which it suggests) that no great mistake, whether 
acted or endured, in our mortal sphere, is ever really 
set right. Time, the continual vicissitude of circum- 
stances, and the invariable inopportunity of death, 
render it impossible. If, after long lapse of years, 
the right seems to be in our power, we find no niche 
to set itin. The better remedy is for the sufferer to 
pass on, and leave what he once thought his irrepa- 
rable ruin far behind him. 

The shock of Judge Pyncheon’s death had a perma- 
nently invigorating and ultimately beneficial effect on 
Clifford. That strong and ponderous man had been 
Clifford’s nightmare. There was no free breath to be 
drawn, within the sphere of so malevolent an influence. 
The first effect of freedom, as we have witnessed in 
Clifford’s aimless flight, was a tremulous exhilaration. 
Subsiding from it, he did not sink into his former in- 
tellectual apathy. He never, it is true, attained to 
nearly the full measure of what might have been his 
faculties. But he recovered enough of them partially 
to light up his character, to display some outline of 
the marvellous grace that was abortive in it, and to 
make him the object of no less deep, although less 
melancholy interest than heretofore. He was evidently 
happy. Could we pause to give another picture of his 


872 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


daily life, with all the appliances now at command 
to gratify his instinct for the Beautiful, the garden 
scenes, that seemed so sweet to him, would look mean 
and trivial in comparison. 

Very soon after their change of fortune, Clifford, 
Hepzibah, and little Pheebe, with the approval of the 
artist, concluded to remove from the dismal old House 
of the Seven Gables, and take up their abode, for the 
present, at the elegant country-seat of the late Judge 
Pyncheon. Chanticleer and his family had already 
been transported thither, where the two hens had 
forthwith begun an indefatigable process of egg-laying, 
with an evident design, as a matter of duty and con- 
science, to continue their illustrious breed under better 
auspices than for a century past. On the day set for 
their departure, the principal personages of our story, 
including good Uncle Venner, were assembled in the 
parlor. 

“The country-house is certainly a very fine one, so 
far as the plan goes,” observed Holgrave, as the party 
were discussing their future arrangements. “But I 
wonder that the late Judge — being so opulent, and 
with a reasonable prospect of transmitting his wealth 
to descendants of his own — should not have felt the 
propriety of embodying so excellent a piece of domes- 
tic architecture in stone, rather than in wood. Then, 
every generation of the family might have altered the 
interior, to suit its own taste and convenience; while 
the exterior, through the lapse of years, might have 
been adding venerableness to its original beauty, and 
thus giving that impression of permanence which I 
consider essential to the happiness of any one mo- 
ment.” 

“Why,” cried Phebe, gazing into the artist’s face 


THE DEPARTURE. 373 


with infinite amazement, “ how wonderfully your ideas 
are changed! A house of stone, indeed! It is but 
two or three weeks ago that you seemed to wish peo- 
ple to live in something as fragile and temporary as a 
bird’s-nest ! ” 

* Ah, Phebe, I told you how it would be!” said 
the artist, with a half-melancholy laugh. ‘ You find 
me a conservative already! Little did I think ever to 
become one. It is especially unpardonable in this 
dwelling of so much hereditary misfortune, and under 
the eye of yonder portrait of a model conservative, 
who, in that very character, rendered himself so long 
the evil destiny of his race.” 

“ That picture!” said Clifford, seeming to shrink 
from its stern glance. ‘ Whenever I look at it, there 
is an old dreamy recollection haunting me, but keep- 
ing just beyond the grasp of my mind. Wealth it 
seems to say!— boundless wealth !— unimaginable 
wealth! I could fancy that, when I was a child, ora 
youth, that portrait had spoken, and told me a rich 
secret, or had held forth its hand, with the written 
record of hidden opulence. But those old matters are 
so dim with me, nowadays! What could this dream 
have been?” 

“ Perhaps I can recall it,” answered Holgrave. 
“See! There are a hundred chances to one that no 
person, unacquainted with the secret, would ever touch 
this spring.” 

“ A secret spring!” cried Clifford. ‘“ Ah, I remem- 
ber now! I did discover it, one summer afternoon, 
when I was idling and dreaming about the house, long 
long ago. But the mystery escapes me.” 

The artist put his finger on the contrivance to which 
he had referred. In former days, the effect would 


3874 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


probably have been to cause the picture to start fon 
ward. But, in so long a period of concealment, the mar 
chinery had been eaten through with rust; so that at 
Holgrave’s pressure, the portrait, frame and all, tum- 
bled suddenly from its position, and lay face down. 
ward on the floor. A recess in the wall was thus 
brought to light, in which lay an object so covered 
with a century’s dust that it could not immediately be 
recognized as a folded sheet of parchment. Holgrave 
opened it, and displayed an ancient deed, signed with 
the hieroglyphics of several Indian sagamores, and 
conveying to Colonel Pyncheon and his heirs, forever, 
a vast extent of territory at the Eastward. 

“‘ This is the very parchment the attempt to recover 
which cost the beautiful Alice Pyncheon her happiness 
and life,” said the artist, alluding to his legend. “It 
is what the Pyncheons sought in vain, while it was 
valuable ; and now that tiey find the treasure, it has 
long been worthless.” 

‘“¢ Poor Cousin Jaffrey! This is what deceived him,” 
exclaimed Hepzibah. ‘ When they were young to- 
pether, Clifford probably made a kind of fairy-tale of 
this discovery. He was always dreaming hither and 
thither about the house, and lighting up its dark cor- 
ners with beautiful stories. And poor Jaffrey, who 
took hold of everything as if it were real, thought my 
brother had found out his uncle’s wealth. He died 
with this delusion in his mind! ” 

“But,” said Phebe, apart to Holgrave, “ how came 
you to know the secret ?” 

*“* My dearest Phebe,” said Holgrave, ‘ how will it 
please you to assume the name of Maule? As for the 
secret, it is the only inheritance that has come dowv 
to me from my ancestors. You should have known 







ee ee 


wae? PSHE = 


HOLGRAVE OPENED IT, AND DISPLAYED AN ANCIENT 
DEED 


ee 





THE DEPARTURE. 375 


sooner (only that I was afraid of frightening you 
away) that, in this long drama of wrong and retribu- 
tion, I represent the old wizard, and am probably as 
much a wizard as ever he was. The son of the exe- 
cuted Matthew Maule, while building this house, took 
the opportunity to construct that recess, and hide away 
the Indian deed, on which depended the immense land- 
claim of the Pyncheons. Thus they bartered their 
Eastern territory for Maule’s garden-ground.” 

“ And now,” said Uncle Venner, “I suppose their 
whole claim is not worth one man’s share in my farm 
yonder ! ” 

“ Uncle Venner,” cried Phoebe, taking the patched 
philosopher’s hand, ‘“ you must never talk any more 
about your farm! You shall never go there, as long 
as you live! There is a cottage in our new garden, — 
the prettiest little yellowish-brown cottage you ever 
saw; and the sweetest-looking place, for it looks just 
as if it were made of gingerbread, —and we are going 
to fit it up and furnish it, on purpose for you. And 
you shall do nothing but what you choose, and shall - 
be as happy as the day is long, and shall keep Cousin 
Clifford in spirits with the wisdom and pleasantness 
which is always dropping from your lips! ” 

“ Ah! my dear child,” quoth good Uncle Venner, 
quite overcome, “if you were to speak to a young 
man as you do to an old one, his chance of keeping 
his heart another minute would not be worth one of 
the buttons on my waistcoat! And—soul alive! — 
that great sigh, which you made me heave, has burst 
off the very last of them! But, never mind! It was 
the happiest sigh I ever did heave; and it seems as if 
I must have drawn in a gulp of heavenly breath, to 


make it with. Well, well Miss Phebe! They'll 


3876 THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. 


miss me in the gardens hereabouts, and round by the 
back doors; and Pyncheon Street, I’m afraid, wil 
hardly look the same without old Uncle Venner, wha 
remembers it with a mowing field on one side, and the 
garden of the Seven Gables on the other. But either 
I must go to your country-seat, or you must come to 
my farm, —that’s one of two things certain; and I 
leave you to choose which!” 

‘Oh, come with us, by all means, Uncle Venner! ” 
said Clifford, who had a remarkable enjoyment of the 
old man’s mellow, quiet, and simple spirit. ‘ I want 
you always to be within five minutes’ saunter of my 
chair. Yeu are the only philosopher I ever knew of 
whose wisdom has not a drop of bitter essence at the 
bottom |” 

“Dear me!” cried Uncle Venner, beginning partly 
to realize what manner of man he was. “And yet 
folks used to set me down among the simple ones, in 
my younger days! But I suppose I am like a Rox- 
bury russet,—a great deal the better, the longer I 
can be kept. Yes; and my words of wisdom, that 
you and Pheebe tell me of, are like the golden dande- 
lions, which never grow in the hot months, but may 
be seen glistening among the withered grass, and un- 
der the dry leaves, sometimes as late as December. 
And you are welcome, friends, to my mess of dande 
lions, if there were twice as many!” 

A plain, but handsome, dark-green barouche haa 
now drawn up in front of the ruinous portal of the 
old mansion-house. The party came forth, and (with 
the exception of good Uncle Venner, who was to fol- 
low in a few days) proceeded to take their places. 
They were chatting and laughing very pleasantly to 
gether ; and—as proves to be often the case, at mo 


THE DEPARTURE. 377 


ments when we ought to palpitate with sensibility — 
Clifford and Hepzibah bade a final farewell to the 
abode of their forefathers, with hardly more emotion 
than if they had made it their arrangement to return 
thither at tea-time. Several children were drawn to 
the spot by so unusual a spectacle as the barouche and 
pair of gray horses. Recognizing little Ned Higgins 
among them, Hepzibah put her hand into her pocket, 
and presented the urchin, her earliest and staunchest 
customer, with silver enough to people the Domdaniel 
cavern of his interior with as various a procession of 
quadrupeds as passed into the ark. 

Two men were passing, just as the barouche drove 
‘off. 

“Well, Dixey,” said one of them, “ what do you 
think of this? My wife kept a cent-shop three months, 
and loss five dollars on her outlay. Old Maid Pyn- 
cheon has been in trade just about as long, and rides 
off in her carriage with a couple of hundred thousand, 
—reckoning her share, and Clifford’s, and Phebe’s, 
-——and some say twice as much! If you choose to 
call it luck, it is all very well; but if we are to take it 
as the will of Providence, why, I can’t exactly fathom 
it!” 

“ Pretty good business!” quoth the sagacious Dixey, 
— “pretty good business ! ” 

Maule’s well, all this time, though left in solitude 
was throwing up a succession of kaleidoscopic pictures. 
in which a gifted eye might have seen foreshadowed 
the coming fortunes of Hepzibah and Clifford, and the 
descendant of the legendary wizard, and the village 
maiden, over whom he had thrown Love’s web of sor- 
cery. The Pyncheon Elm, moreover, with what folli- 
age the September gale had spared to it, whispered 


378 THE HOUSE OP THE SEVEN GABLES. 


unintelligible prophecies. And wise Uncle Venner, 
passing slowly from the ruinous porch, seemed to hear 
a strain of music, and fancied that sweet Alice Pyn- 
cheon — after witnessing these deeds, this bygone woe 
and this present happiness, of her kindred mortals ~ 
had given one farewell touch of a spirit’s joy upon 
her harpsichord, as she floated heavenward from the 
House OF THE SEVEN GABLES ! 

















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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 


3 0112 001452876 





